"It was before my father died; we were up in the old Maine place,"
he had said. "Gosh, Bill was cute that day! We went on a drive--no
motor cars then--and took our lunch, and after lunch the kid comes
and settles herself in my arms--for a nap, if you please! 'Say,
look-a-here,' I said, 'what do you think I am--a Pullman?' I
wanted a smoke, by George! She wasn't two, you know. Her fat
little legs were bare, we'd put her into socks, and her face was
flushed, and she just looked up at me through her hair and said,
'Hing!' Well, it was good-bye smoke for me! I sang all right, and
she cuddled down as pleased as a kitten, and off she went!"
To-day Rachael's eyes wandered from the picture to Clarence's
face. She tried to study it dispassionately, but, still shaken by
their recent conversation, and sitting there, as she knew she was
sitting there, merely to prove that it had had no effect upon her,
she felt this to be a little difficult.
What sort of a little boy had he been? A fat little boy, of
course. She disliked fat little boys. A spoiled little boy, never
crossed in any way. His mother made him go to Sunday-school, and
dancing school, and to Miss Nesmith's private academy, where he
was coaxed and praised and indulged even more than at home. And
old Fanny, who was still with Florence, superintended his baths
and took care of his clothes, and ran her finger over the bristles
of his toothbrush every morning, to see if he had told her the
truth. He rarely did; they used to laugh about those old
deceptions. Clarence used to laugh as violently as the old woman
when she accused him of occasional kicking and biting.
Other boys came in to play with him. Was it because of his magic
lantern and his velocipede, his unending supply of cream puffs and
licorice sticks, or because they liked him? Rachael knew only a
detail here and there: that he had danced a fancy dance with Anna
Vanderwall when he was a fat sixteen, at a Kermess, and that he
had given a stag dinner to twenty youths of his own age a few days
before he went off to college, and that they had drunk a hundred
and fifty dollars' worth of champagne. She knew that his allowance
at college was three hundred dollars a month, and that he never
stayed within it, and it was old Fanny's boast that every stitch
the boy ever wore from the day he was born came from London or
Paris. His underwear was as dainty as a bride's; he had his first
dress suit at fifteen; at college he had his suite of three big
rooms furnished like showrooms, his monogrammed cigarettes, his
boat, and his horse.