"Yes, Uncle David."
"Why are you packing it again?"
Her eyes fell and she tried desperately to control a quivering lip.
"Because I am--I want to go back."
"Back where?"
"To Cape Cod."
"Why, Eleanor?"
"I ain"t wanted," she said, her head low. "I made up my mind to go back to my own folks. I"m not going to be adopted any more."
David led her to the deep window-seat and made her sit facing him. He was too wise to attempt a caress with this issue between them.
"Do you think that"s altogether fair to me?" he asked presently.
"I guess it won"t make much difference to you. Something else will come along."
"Do you think it will be fair to your other aunts and uncles who have given so much care and thought to your welfare?"
"They"ll get tired of their bargain."
"If they do get tired of their bargain it will be because they"ve turned out to be very poor sports. I"ve known every one of them a long time, and I"ve never known them to show any signs of poor sportsmanship yet. If you run away without giving them their chance to make good, it will be you who are the poor sport."
"She said you would marry and get tired of me, and I would have to go back to the country. If you marry and Uncle Jimmie marries--then Uncle Peter will marry, and--"
"You"d still have your Aunts Beulah and Margaret and Gertrude," David could not resist making the suggestion.
"They could do it, too. If one person broke up the vow, I guess they all would. Misfortunes never come singly."
"But even if we did, Eleanor, even if we all married, we"d still regard you as our own, our child, our charge."
"_She_ said you wouldn"t." The tears came now, and David gathered the little shaking figure to his breast. "I don"t want to be the wife of the farmer for whom fate intended me," she sobbed. "I want to marry somebody refined with extravagant living and a.s.sociations."
"That"s one of the things we are bringing you up for, my dear." This aspect of the case occurred to David for the first time, but he realized its potency. "You mustn"t take mother too seriously. Just jolly her along a little and you"ll soon get to be famous friends.
She"s never had any little girls of her own, only my brother and me, and she doesn"t know quite how to talk to them."
"The Hutchinsons had a hired butler and gold spoons, and they didn"t think I was the dust beneath their feet. I don"t know what to say to her. I said ain"t, and I wasn"t refined, and I"ll only just be a disgrace to you. I"d rather go back to Cape Cod, and go out to work, and stand Albertina and everything."
"If you think it"s the square thing to do," David said slowly, "you may go, Eleanor. I"ll take you to New York to-morrow and get one of the girls to take you to Colha.s.sett. Of course, if you do that it will put me in rather an awkward position. The others have all had you for two months and made good on the proposition. I shall have to admit that I couldn"t even keep you with me twenty-four hours. Peter and Jimmie got along all right, but I couldn"t handle you at all. As a cooperative parent, I"m such a failure that the whole experiment goes to pieces through me."
"Not you--her."
"Well, it"s the same thing,--you couldn"t stand the surroundings I brought you to. You couldn"t even be polite to my mother for my sake."
"I--never thought of that, Uncle David."
"Think of it now for a few minutes, won"t you, Eleanor?"
The rain was beginning to lash the windows, and to sweep the lawn in long slant strokes. The little girl held up her face as if it could beat through the panes on it.
"I thought," she said slowly, "that after Albertina I wouldn"t _take_ anything from anybody. Uncle Peter says that I"m just as good as anybody, even if I have been out to work. He said that all I had to do was just to stand up to people."
"There are a good many different ways of standing up to people, Eleanor. Be sure you"ve got the right way and then go ahead."
"I guess I ought to have been politer," Eleanor said slowly. "I ought to have thought that she was your own mother. You couldn"t help the way she acted, o" course."
"The way you acted is the point, Eleanor."
Eleanor reflected.
"I"ll act different if you want me to, Uncle David," she said, "and I won"t go and leave you."
"That"s my brave girl. I don"t think that I altogether cover myself with glory in an interview with my mother," he added. "It isn"t the thing that I"m best at, I admit."
"You did pretty good," Eleanor consoled him. "I guess she makes you kind of bashful the way she does me," from which David gathered with an odd sense of shock that Eleanor felt there was something to criticize in his conduct, if she had permitted herself to look for it.
"I know what I"ll do," Eleanor decided dreamily with her nose against the pane. "I"ll just pretend that she"s Mrs. O"Farrel"s aunt, and then whatever she does, I shan"t care. I"ll know that I"m the strongest and could hit her if I had a mind to, and then I shan"t want to."
David contemplated her gravely for several seconds.
"By the time you grow up, Eleanor," he said finally, "you will have developed all your cooperative parents into fine strong characters.
Your educational methods are wonderful."
"The dog got nearly drownded today in the founting," Eleanor wrote.
"It is a very little dog about the size of Gwendolyn. It was out with Mademoiselle, and so was I, learning French on a garden seat. It teetered around on the edge of the big wash basin--the founting looks like a wash basin, and suddenly it fell in. I waded right in and got it, but it slipped around so I couldn"t get it right away. It looked almost too dead to come to again, but I gave it first aid to the drownded the way Uncle Jimmie taught me to practicing on Gwendolyn.
When I got it fixed I looked up and saw Uncle David"s mother coming. I took the dog and gave it to her. I said, "Madam, here"s your dog."
Mademoiselle ran around ringing her hands and talking about it. Then I went up to Mrs. Bolling"s room, and we talked. I told her how to make mustard pickles, and how my mother"s grandpa"s relation came over in the Mayflower, and about our single white lilac bush, and she"s going to get one and make the pickles. Then I played double Canfield with her for a while. I"m glad I didn"t go home before I knew her better.
When she acts like Mrs. O"Farrel"s aunt I pretend she is her, and we don"t quarrel. She says does Uncle David go much to see Aunt Beulah, and I say, not so often as Uncle Jimmie does. Then she says does he go to see Aunt Margaret, and I say that he goes to see Uncle Peter the most. Well, if he doesn"t he almost does. You can"t tell Mrs. Madam Bolling that you won"t tattle, because she would think the worst."
Eleanor grew to like Mademoiselle. She was the aging, rather wry faced Frenchwoman who had been David"s young brother"s governess and had made herself so useful to Mrs. Bolling that she was kept always on the place, half companion and half resident housekeeper. She was glad to have a child in charge again, and Eleanor soon found that her crooked features and severe high-shouldered back that had somewhat intimidated her at first, actually belonged to one of the kindest hearted creatures in the world.
Paris and Colha.s.sett bore very little resemblance to each other, the two discovered. To be sure there were red geraniums every alternating year in the gardens of the Louvre, and every year in front of the Sunshine Library in Colha.s.sett. The residents of both places did a great deal of driving in fine weather. In Colha.s.sett they drove on the state highway, recently macadamized to the dismay of the taxpayers who did not own horses or automobiles. In Paris they drove out to the Bois by way of the Champs Elysees. In Colha.s.sett they had only one ice-cream saloon, but in Paris they had a good many of them out-of-doors in the parks and even on the sidewalk, and there you could buy all kinds of sirups and "what you call cordials" and _aperitifs_; but the two places on the whole were quite different. The people were different, too. The people of Colha.s.sett were all religious and thought it was sinful to play cards on Sundays.
Mademoiselle said she always felt wicked when she played them on a week day.
"I think of my mother," she said; "she would say "Juliette, what will you say to the Lord when he knows that you have been playing cards on a working day. Playing cards is for Sunday.""
"The Lord that they have in Colha.s.sett is not like that," Eleanor stated without conscious irreverence.
"She is a vary fonny child, madam," Mademoiselle answered Mrs.
Bolling"s inquiry. "She has taste, but no--experience even of the most ordinary. She cooks, but she does no embroidery. She knits and knows no games to play. She has a good brain, but Mon Dieu, no one has taught her to ask questions with it."