Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy (34 page)

Punch is paying a call this morning. For the last half-hour, while I have been busily scratching away to you, he has been established in the window-seat, quietly and undestructively engaged with colored pencils. Betsy,
en passant,
just dropped a kiss upon his nose.

“Aw, gwan!” said Punch, blushing quite pink, and wiping off the caress with a fine show of masculine indifference. But I notice he has resumed work upon his red-and-green landscape with heightened ardor and an attempt at whistling. We'll succeed yet in conquering that young man's temper.

Tuesday.

The doctor is in a very grumbly mood to-day. He called just as the children were marching in to dinner, whereupon he marched, too, and sampled their food, and, oh, my dear! the potatoes were scorched! And such a clishmaclaver as that man made! It is the first time the potatoes ever have been scorched, and you know that scorching sometimes happens in the best of families. But you would think from Sandy's language that the cook had scorched them on purpose, in accordance with my orders.

As I have told you before, I could do very nicely without Sandy.

Wednesday.

Yesterday being a wonderful sunny day, Betsy and I turned our backs upon duty and motored to the very fancy home of some friends of hers, where we had tea in an Italian garden. Punch and Sadie Kate had been
such
good children all day that at the last moment we telephoned for permission to include them, too.

“Yes, indeed, do bring the little dears,” was the enthusiastic response.

But the choice of Punch and Sadie Kate was a mistake. We ought to have taken Mamie Prout, who has demonstrated her ability to sit. I shall spare you the details of our visit; the climax was reached when Punch went gold-fishing in the bottom of the swimming-pool. Our host pulled him out by an agitated leg, and the child returned to the asylum swathed in that gentleman's rose-colored bath-robe.

What do you think? Dr. Robin MacRae, in a contrite mood for having been so intensely disagreeable yesterday, has just invited Betsy and me to take supper in his olive-green house next Sunday evening at seven o'clock in order to look at some microscopic slides. The entertainment, I believe, is to consist of a scarlet-fever culture, some alcoholic tissue, and a tubercular gland. These social attentions bore him excessively; but he realizes that if he is to have free scope in applying his theories to the institution he must be a little polite to its superintendent.

I have just read this letter over, and I must admit that it skips lightly from topic to topic. But though it may not contain news of any great moment, I trust you will realize that its writing has consumed every vacant minute during the last three days.

I am,
Most fully occupied,
SALLIE MCBRIDE.

 

P.S. A blessed woman came this morning and said she would take a child for the summer—one of the sickest, weakest, neediest babies I could give her. She had just lost her husband, and wanted something
hard
to do. Isn't that really very touching?

 

Saturday afternoon.

Brother Jimmie (we are very alliterative!), spurred on by sundry begging letters from me, has at last sent us a present; but he picked it out himself.

We have a monkey!
His name is Java.

The children no longer hear the school-bell ring. On the day the creature came, this entire institution formed in line and filed past and shook his paw. Poor Sing's nose is out of joint. I have to
pay
to have him washed.

Sadie Kate is developing into my private secretary. I have her answer the thank-you letters for the institution, and her literary style is making a hit among our benefactors. She invariably calls out a second gift. I had hitherto believed that the Kilcoyne family sprang from the wild west of Ireland, but I begin to suspect that their source was nearer Blarney Castle. You can see from the inclosed copy of the letter she sent to Jimmie what a persuasive pen the young person has. I trust that, in this case at least, it will not bear the fruit that she suggests.

Percy de Forest Witherspoon is still faithful to his little followers, though I am so afraid he will get tired that I urge him to take frequent vacations. He has not only been faithful himself, but has brought in recruits. He has large social connections in the neighborhood, and last Saturday evening he introduced two friends, nice men who sat around the camp-fire and swapped hunting-stories.

One of them was just back from around the world, and told hair-raising anecdotes of the head-hunters of Sarawak, a narrow pink country on the top of Borneo. My little braves pant to grow up and get to Sarawak, and go out on the war-path after head-hunters. Every encyclopedia in this institution has been consulted, and there isn't a boy here who cannot tell you the history, manners, climate, flora, and fungi of Borneo. I only wish Mr. Witherspoon would introduce friends who had been head-hunting in England, France, and Germany, countries not quite so
chic
as Sarawak, but more useful for general culture.

We have a new cook, the fourth since my reign began. I haven't bothered you with my cooking troubles, but institutions don't escape any more than families. The last is a negro woman, a big, fat, smiling, chocolate-colored creature from Souf Ca'lina. And ever since she came on honey dew we've fed! Her name is—what do you guess?
Sallie,
if you please. I suggested that she change it.

“Sho, Miss, I's had dat name Sallie longer 'n you, an' I couldn't get used nohow to answerin' up pert-like when you sings out ‘Mollie!' Seems like Sallie just b'longs to me.”

So “Sallie” she remains; but at least there is no danger of our getting our letters mixed, for her last name is nothing so plebeian as McBride. It's Johnston-Washington, with a hyphen.

Sunday.

Our favorite game of late is finding pet names for Sandy. His austere presence lends itself to caricature. We have just originated a new batch. The “Laird o' Cockpen”
³⁰
is Percy's choice.

Miss Snaith disguestedly calls him “that man,” and Betsy refers to him (in his absence) as “Dr. Cod-Liver.” My present favorite is “Macphairson Clon Glocketty Angus McClan.” But for real poetic feeling, Sadie Kate beats us all. She calls him “Mister Someday Soon.” I don't believe that the doctor ever dropped into verse but once in his life, but every child in this institution knows that one poem by heart.

It's this evening that Betsy and I attend his supper-party, and I confess that we are looking forward to seeing the interior of his gloomy mansion with gleeful eagerness. He never talks about himself or his past or anybody connected with himself. He appears to be an isolated figure standing on a pedestal labeled SCIENCE, without a glimmer of any ordinary affections or emotions or human frailties except temper. Betsy and I are simply eaten up with curiosity to know what sort of past he came out of; but just let us get inside his house, and to our detective senses it will tell its own story. So long as the portal was guarded by a fierce McGurk, we had despaired of ever effecting an entrance; but now, behold! The door has opened of its own accord.

S. MCB.

 

 

 

Monday.

We attended the doctor's supper-party last night, Betsy and Mr. Witherspoon and I. It turned out a passably cheerful occasion, though I will say that it began under heavy auspices.

His house on the inside is all that the outside promises; never in my life have I seen such an interior as that man's dining-room. The walls and carpets and lambrequins are a heavy dark green. A black-marble mantelpiece shelters a few smoking black coals. The furniture is as nearly black as furniture comes. The decorations are two steel engravings in shiny black frames—the “Monarch of the Glen,” and the “Stag at Bay.”
³¹

We tried hard to be light and sparkling, but it was like eating supper in the family vault. Mrs. McGurk, in black alpaca with a black silk apron, clumped around the table, passing cold, heavy things to eat, with a step so firm that she rattled the silver in the sideboard drawers. Her nose was up, and her mouth was down. She clearly does not approve of the master's entertaining, and she wishes to discourage all guests from ever accepting again.

Sandy sort of dimly knows that there is something the matter with his house, and in order to brighten it up a bit in honor of his guests, he had purchased flowers—dozens of them—the most exquisite pink Killarney roses and red and yellow tulips. The McGurk had wedged them all together as tight as they would fit into a peacock-blue jardinière, and plumped it down in the center of the table. The thing was as big as a bushel-basket. Betsy and I nearly forgot our manners when we saw that centerpiece; but the doctor seemed so innocently pleased at having obtained a bright note in his dining-room that we suppressed our amusement and complimented him warmly upon his happy color scheme.

The moment supper was over, we hastened with relief to his own part of the house, where the McGurk's influence does not penetrate. No one in a cleaning capacity ever enters either his library or office or laboratory except Llewelyn, a short, wiry, bow-legged Welshman, who combines to a unique degree the qualities of chambermaid and chauffeur.

The library, though not the most cheerful room I have ever seen, still, for a man's house, is not so bad—books all around from floor to ceiling, with the overflow in piles on floor and table and mantelpiece; half a dozen abysmal leather chairs and a rug or so, with another black marble mantelpiece, but this time containing a crackling wood fire. By way of bric-à-brac, he has a stuffed pelican and a crane with a frog in its mouth, also a racoon sitting on a log, and a varnished tarpon. A faint suggestion of iodoform floats in the air.