In the midst of a dissertation on the relation of corn meal to eggs
the door opened, and Mr. Lawton sidled in.
"Oh, here y' are at last!" observed his spouse scornfully, and rattled
on. Lawton nodded awkwardly, and perched himself on the edge of a
chair. He had assumed an ill-fitting suit of store clothes, in which he
unaccustomedly writhed, and evidently, to judge from the sleekness of
his hair, had recently plunged his head in a pail of water. He said
nothing, but whenever Mrs. Lawton was not looking he winked elaborately
and solemnly at Bennington as though to imply that circumstances alone
prevented any more open show of cordiality. At last, catching the young
man's eye at a more than usually propitious moment, he went through the
pantomime of opening a bottle, then furtively arose and disappeared.
Mrs. Lawton, remembering her cakes, ran out. Bennington was left alone
again. He had not spoken six words.
The door slowly opened, and another member of the family sidled in.
Bennington owned a helpless feeling that this was a sort of show, and
that these various actors in it were parading their entrances and
their exits before him. Or that he himself were the object of
inspection on whom the others were satisfying their own curiosity.
The newcomer was a child, a little girl about eight or ten years old.
Bennington liked children as a usual thing. No one on earth could have
become possessed in this one's favour. She was a creature of regular
but mean features, extreme gravity, and evidently of an inquiring
disposition. On seeing her for the first time, one sophisticated would
have expected a deluge of questions. Bennington did. But she merely
stood and stared without winking.
"Hullo, little girl!" Bennington greeted her uneasily.
The creature only stared the harder.
"My doll's name is Garnet M-a-ay," she observed suddenly, with a
long-drawn nasal accent.
After this interesting bit of information another silence fell.
"What is your name, little girl?" Bennington asked desperately at
last.
"Maude," remarked the phenomenon briefly.
This statement she delivered in that whining tone which the extremely
self-conscious infant imagines to indicate playful childishness. She
approached.
"D' you want t' see my picters?" she whimpered confidingly.
Bennington expressed his delight.
For seven geological ages did he gaze upon cheap and horrible woodcuts
of gentlemen in fashionable raiment trying to lean against
conspicuously inadequate rustic gates; equally fashionable ladies, with
flat chests, and rat's nest hair; and animals whose attitudes denoted
playful sportiveness of disposition. Each of these pictures was
explained in minute detail. Bennington's distress became apathy. Mrs.
Lawton returned from the cakes presently, yet her voice seemed to break
in on the duration of centuries.
"Now, Maude!" she exclaimed, with a proper maternal pride, "you mustn't
be botherin' the gentleman." She paused to receive the expected
disclaimer. It was made, albeit a little weakly. "Maude is very good
with her Book," she explained. "Miss Brown, that's the school teacher
that comes over from Hill Town summers, she says Maude reads a sight
better than lots as is two or three years older. Now how old would you
think she was, Mr. de Laney?"