"Oh, David, you little monkey! Listen to me: you weren't very polite
to Dr. King."
"O-o-o-o-o-o!" roared the bear.
"You should make him feel you were glad to see him."
"I wasn't," mumbled David.
"But you must have manners, dear little boy."
"I have," David defended himself, sitting up straight. "I have them in
my head; but I only use them sometimes."
Upon which the disciplinarian collapsed; "You rogue!" she said; "come
here, and I'll give you 'forty kisses'!"
David was instantly silent; he shrank away, lifting his shoulder
against his cheek and looking at her shyly. "I won't, dear!" she
reassured him, impetuously: "truly I won't."
But she said to herself she must remember to repeat the speech about
manners to the doctor; it would make him laugh.
William laughed easily when he came to the Stuffed Animal House.
Indeed, he had laughed when he went away from it, and stopped for a
minute at Dr. Lavendar's to tell him that Mrs. Richie was just as
anxious as anybody that Sam Wright should attend to his business.
"Business!" said the doctor, "much she knows about it!" And then he
added that he was sure she would do her part to influence the boy to
be more industrious. "And you may depend on it, she won't allow any
love-making," said William.
He laughed again suddenly, out loud, as he ate his supper that night,
because some memory of the after-noon came into his head. When Martha,
starting at the unusual sound, asked what he was laughing at, he told
her he had found Mrs. Richie playing with David Allison. "They were
like two children; I said I didn't know which was the younger. They
were pretending they were shipwrecked; the swing was the vessel, if
you please!"
"I suppose she was trying to amuse him," Mrs. King said. "That's a
great mistake with children. Give a child a book, or put him down to
some useful task; that's my idea."
"Oh, she was amusing herself," William explained. Mrs. King was
silent.
"She gets up for breakfast now, on account of David; it's evidently a
great undertaking!" the doctor said humorously.
Martha held her lips hard together.
"You ought to hear her housekeeping ideas," William rambled on. "I
happened to say you wanted some lye for soap. She didn't know soap was
made with lye! You would have laughed to hear her--"