When I awoke from a few hours of deep and exhausted sleep I found my
room fast filling with the strenuosities of the day. In fact, I opened
them upon Harriet Henderson, up, dressed and briskly doing. She had a
large pasteboard box with her and the minute I brushed repose from my
eyes she opened it and held up for my inspection a very short tulle
garment besprinkled with tiny silk rosebuds, along with a bonnet and
other wee but distinctly feminine paraphernalia to match. A basket
adorned with a huge bow of tulle came from another box and I was forced
to voice my admiration with the greatest vigor.
"How I'll ever keep from eating Sue up before she gets to the altar, I
can't see," said Harriet, as she held the wee frock for a second against
her breast. It hurts me to the quick of my own breast to see Harriet's
eyes when she broods over Sue. I don't see how she is going to live
life always as hungry as she is now.
"I suppose I might just as well wear my tennis things, because the
guests will be already as completely enraptured as is humanly possible
before my entry upon the scene of action of my own wedding," I said, as
I sat up and took the small bonnet in my own hand. "It is too bad that
Jessie and Letitia should worry themselves over my own wedding frock, if
Susan is--" I was just saying when Nell arrived beside my bed with the
Suckling in the very act of obtaining her early luncheon from the
maternal fount. The nurse has always had to follow Nell about with her
successive hungry offspring.
"Girls, I really don't know what to do, but young Charlotte has given
every single presentable garment that Jimmy possessed to different
unclothed children in the Settlement, who were needed in the pageant,
and Mark and Billy are laughing at her, while Jimmy is howling. I just
ran in to see Harriet a minute and ask her if she--"
"Yes, Jimmie's wedding garments came home from Mrs. Burns' yesterday and
I'll lend them to you just to spite those men, who are simply ruining
Charlotte by the day," said Harriet, as Nell handed her the replete
Suckling wrong end foremost and picked up the small tulle bonnet with a
gurgle of maternal rapture that was in some ways as young as the happy
gurgle that the Suckling gave as she settled into Harriet's dependable
arms for her morning nap. Harriet cradled her against her own round,
firm breast and for a second brooded then joined in Nell's rapture over
the garments for the bedizening of wee Susan.
"If Harriet didn't dress and discipline my children I feel sure they
would be found naked in a reform school," Nell said, with a happy and
careless gratitude. There are some women to whom life is incidental and
maternity the most casual adventure of all. The happy-go-lucky variety
are apt to produce just such children as Charlotte or young James or
Susan, and it is well if into their young lives there comes the hungry
woman with a brooding mission.