Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy (32 page)

Dr. MacRae dropped in about nine o'clock, after visiting the hospital ward. We've got three cases of whooping-cough, but all isolated, and no more coming. How those three got it is a mystery. It seems that there is a little bird that brings whooping-cough to orphan-asylums.

Jimmie fell upon him for backing in his camp scheme, and the doctor gave it enthusiastically. They seized pencil and paper and drew up plans; and before the evening was over, the last nail was hammered. Nothing would satisfy those two men but to go to the telephone at ten o'clock and rouse a poor carpenter from his sleep. He and some lumber are ordered for eight in the morning.

I finally got rid of them at ten-thirty, still talking uprights and joists and drainage and roof slants.

The excitement of Jimmie and coffee and all these building operations induced me to sit down immediately and write a letter to you; but I think, by your leave, I'll postpone further details to another time.

Yours ever,
SALLIE.

 

 

 

Saturday.

Will you be after dining with us at seven to-night? It's a real dinner-party; we're going to have ice-cream.

My brother has discovered a promising young man to take charge of the boys,—maybe you know him,—Mr. Witherspoon, at the bank. I wish to introduce him to asylum circles by easy steps, so
please
don't mention insanity or epilepsy or alcoholism or any of your other favorite topics.

He is a gay young society leader, used to very fancy things to eat. Do you suppose we can ever make him happy at the John Grier Home?

Yours in evident haste,
SALLIE MCBRIDE.

 

 

 

Sunday.

Jimmie was back at eight Friday morning, and the doctor at a quarter past. They and the carpenter and our new farmer and Noah and our two horses and our eight biggest boys have been working ever since. Never were building operations set going in faster time. I wish I had a dozen Jimmies on the place, though I will say that my brother works faster if you catch him before the first edge of his enthusiasm wears away. He would not be much good at chiseling out a medieval cathedral.

He came back Saturday morning aglow with a new idea. He had met at the hotel the night before a friend who belongs to his hunting-club in Canada, and who is cashier of our First (and only) National Bank.

“He's a bully good sport,” said Jimmie, “and exactly the man you want to camp out with those kids and lick 'em into shape. He'll be willing to come for his board and forty dollars a month, because he's engaged to a girl in Detroit and wants to save. I told him the food was rotten, but if he kicked enough, you'd probably get a new cook.”

“What's his name?” said I, with guarded interest.

“He's got a peach of a name. It's Percy de Forest Witherspoon.”

I nearly had hysterics. Imagine a Percy de Forest Witherspoon in charge of those twenty-four wild little savages!

But you know Jimmie when he has an idea. He had already invited Mr. Witherspoon to dine with me on Saturday evening, and had ordered oysters and squabs and ice-cream from the village caterer to help out my veal. It ended by my giving a very formal dinner-party, with Miss Matthews and Betsy and the doctor included.

I almost asked the Hon. Cy and Miss Snaith. Ever since I have known those two, I have felt that there ought to be a romance between them. Never have I known two people who matched so perfectly. He's a widower with five children. Don't you suppose it might be arranged? If he had a wife to take up his attention, it might deflect him a little from us. I'd be getting rid of them both at one stroke. It's to be considered among our future improvements.

Anyway, we had our dinner. And during the course of the evening my anxiety grew, not as to whether Percy would do for us, but as to whether we should do for Percy. If I searched the world over, I never could find a young man more calculated to win the affection of those boys. You know, just by looking at him, that he does everything well, at least everything vigorous. His literary and artistic accomplishments I suspect a bit, but he rides and shoots and plays golf and foot-ball and sails a boat. He likes to sleep out of doors and he likes boys. He has always wanted to know some orphans; often read about 'em in books, he says, but never met any face to face. Percy does seem too good to be true.

Before they left, Jimmie and the doctor hunted up a lantern, and in their evening clothes conducted Mr. Witherspoon across a plowed field to inspect his future dwelling.

And such a Sunday as we passed! I had absolutely to forbid their carpentering. Those men would have put in a full day, quite irrespective of the damage done to one hundred and four little moral natures. As it is, they have just stood and looked at those shacks and handled their hammers, and thought about where they would drive the first nail to-morrow morning. The more I study men, the more I realize that they are nothing in the world but boys grown too big to be spankable.

I am awfully worried as to how to feed Mr. Witherspoon. He looks as though he had a frightfully healthy appetite, and he looks as though he couldn't swallow his dinner unless he had on evening clothes. I've made Betsy send home for a trunkful of evening gowns in order to keep up our social standing. One thing is fortunate: he takes his luncheon at the hotel, and I hear their luncheons are very filling.

Tell Jervis I am sorry he is not with us to drive a nail for the camp. Here comes the Hon. Cy up the path. Heaven save us!

Ever your unfortunate,

S. MCB.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
May 8.

Our camp is finished, our energetic brother has gone, and our twenty-four boys have passed two healthful nights in the open. The three bark-covered shacks add a pleasant rustic touch to the grounds. They are like those we used to have in the Adirondacks, closed on three sides and open in the front, and one larger than the rest to allow a private pavilion for Mr. Percy Witherspoon. An adjacent hut, less exposed to the weather, affords extremely adequate bathing facilities, consisting of a faucet in the wall and three watering-cans. Each camp has a bath-master who stands on a stool and sprinkles each little shiverer as he trots under. Since our trustees
won't
give us enough bath-tubs, we have to use our wits.

The three camps have organized into three tribes of Indians, each with a chief of its own to answer for its conduct, Mr. Witherspoon high chief of all, and Dr. MacRae the medicine man. They dedicated their lodges Tuesday evening with appropriate tribal ceremonies; and though they politely invited me to attend, I decided that it was a purely masculine affair, so I declined to go, but sent refreshments, a very popular move. Betsy and I walked as far as the base-ball-field in the course of the evening, and caught a glimpse of the orgies. The braves were squatting in a circle about a big fire, each decorated with a blanket from his bed and a rakish band of feathers. (Our chickens seem very scant as to tail, but I have asked no unpleasant questions.) The doctor, with a Navajo blanket about his shoulders, was executing a war-dance, while Jimmie and Mr. Witherspoon beat on war-drums—two of our copper kettles, now permanently dented. Fancy Sandy! It's the first youthful glimmer I have ever caught in the man.

After ten o'clock, when the braves were safely stowed for the night, the three men came in and limply dropped into comfortable chairs in my library, with the air of having made martyrs of themselves in the great cause of charity. But they did not deceive me. They originated all that tomfoolery for their own individual delectation.

So far Mr. Percy Witherspoon appears fairly happy. He is presiding at one end of the officers' table under the special protection of Betsy, and I am told that he instils considerable life into that sedate assemblage. I have endeavored to run up their menu a trifle, and he accepts what is put before him with a perfectly good appetite, irrespective of the absence of such accustomed trifles as oysters and quail and soft-shell crabs.

There was no sign of a private sitting-room that I could put at this young man's disposal, but he himself has solved the difficulty by proposing to occupy our new laboratory. So he spends his evenings with a book and a pipe, comfortably stretched in the dentist's chair. There are not many society men who would be willing to spend their evenings so harmlessly. That girl in Detroit is a lucky young thing.

Mercy! An automobile full of people has just arrived to look over the institution, and Betsy, who usually does the honors, not here. I fly.

Addio!
SALLIE.

 

 

This is not a letter,—I don't owe you one,—it's a receipt for sixty-five pairs of roller-skates.

Many thanks.
S. MCB.

Friday.

I hear that I missed a call to-day, but Jane delivered your message, together with the “Genetic Philosophy of Education.”
²⁶
She says that you will call in a few days for my opinion of the book. Is it to be a written or an oral examination?

And doesn't it ever occur to you that this education business is rather one-sided? It often strikes me that Dr. Robin MacRae's mental attitude would also be the better for some slight refurbishing. I will promise to read your book, provided you read one of mine. I am sending herewith the “Dolly Dialogues,”
²⁷
and shall ask for an opinion in a day or so.

It's uphill work making a Scotch Presbyterian frivolous, but persistency accomplishes wonders.

S. McB.

May 13.

Talk about floods in Ohio! Right here in Dutchess County we are the consistency of a wet sponge. Rain for five days, and everything wrong with this institution.

The babies have had croup, and we have been up o' nights with them. Cook has given notice, and there's a dead rat in the walls. Our three camps leaked, and in the early dawn, after the first cloud-burst, twenty-four bedraggled little Indians, wrapped in damp bedding, came shivering to the door and begged for admission. Since then every clothes-line, every stair-railing has been covered with wet and smelly blankets that steam, but won't dry. Mr. Percy de Forest Witherspoon has returned to the hotel to wait until the sun comes out.

After being cooped up for four days with no exercise to speak of, the children's badness is breaking out in red spots, like the measles. Betsy and I have thought of every form of active and innocent occupation that could be carried on in such a congested quarter as this: blind-man's-buff and pillow fights and hide-and-go-seek, gymnastics in the dining-room, and bean-bags in the school-room. (We broke two windows.) The boys played leap-frog up and down the hall, and jarred all the plaster in the building. We have cleaned energetically and furiously. All the woodwork has been washed, and all of the floors polished; but despite everything, we have a great deal of energy left, and we are getting to that point of nerves where we want to punch one another.

Sadie Kate has been acting like a little deil—do they have feminine deils? If not, Sadie Kate has originated the species. And this afternoon Loretta Higgins had—well, I don't know whether it was a sort of fit or just a temper. She lay down on the floor and howled for a solid hour, and when any one tried to approach her, she thrashed about like a little windmill and bit and kicked.

By the time the doctor came she had pretty well worn herself out. He picked her up, limp and drooping, and carried her to a cot in the hospital-room; and after she was asleep he came down to my library and asked to look at the archives.

Loretta is thirteen; in the three years she has been here she has had five of these outbreaks, and has been punished good and hard for them. The child's ancestral record is simple: “Mother died of alcoholic dementia, Bloomingdale Asylum.
²⁸
Father unknown.”

He studied the page long and frowningly and shook his head.

“With a heredity like that, is it right to punish the child for having a shattered nervous system?”

“It is not,” said I, firmly. “We will mend her shattered nervous system.”

“If we can.”

“We'll feed her up on cod-liver oil and sunshine, and find a nice kind foster-mother who will take pity on the poor little—”

But then my voice trailed off into nothing as I pictured Loretta's face, with her hollow eyes and big nose and open mouth and no chin and stringy hair and sticking-out ears. No foster-mother in the world would love a child who looked like that.