Annie made up a bed for Idella on a wide, old-fashioned lounge in her room, and put her away in it, swathed in a night-gown which she found among the survivals of her own childish clothing in that old chest of drawers. When she woke in the morning she looked across at the little creature, with a tender sense of possession and protection suffusing her troubled recollections of the night before. Idella stirred, stretched herself with a long sigh, and then sat up and stared round the strange place as if she were still in a dream.
“Would you like to come in here with me?” Annie suggested from her bed.
The child pushed back her hair with her little hands, and after waiting to realise the situation to the limit of her small experience, she said, with a smile that showed her pretty teeth, “Yes.”
“Then come.”
Idella tumbled out of bed, pulling up the nightgown, which was too long for her, and softly thumped across the carpet. Annie leaned over and lifted her up, and pressed the little face to her own, and felt the play of the quick, light breath over her cheek.
“Would you like to stay with me—live with me—Idella?” she asked.
The child turned her face away, and hid a roguish smile in the pillow. “I don't know.”
“Would you like to be my little girl?”
“No.”
“No? Why not?”
“Because—because”—she seemed to search her mind—“because your night-gowns are too long.”
“Oh, is that all? That's no reason. Think of something else.”
Idella rubbed her face hard on the pillow. “You dress up cats.”
She lifted her face, and looked with eyes of laughing malice into Annie's, and Annie pushed her face against Idella's neck and cried, “You're a rogue!”
The little one screamed with laughter and gurgled: “Oh, you tickle! You tickle!”
They had a childish romp, prolonged through the details of Idella's washing and dressing, and Annie tried to lose, in her frolic with the child, the anxieties that had beset her waking; she succeeded in confusing them with one another in one dull, indefinite pain.
She wondered when Mr. Peck would come for Idella, but they were still at their belated breakfast when Mrs. Bolton came in to say that Bolton had met the minister on his way up, and had asked him if Idella might not stay the week out with them.
“I don' know but he done more'n he'd ought.
“But she can be with us the rest part, when you've got done with her.”
“I haven't begun to get done with her,” said Annie. “I'm glad Mr. Bolton asked.”
After breakfast Bolton himself appeared, to ask if Idella might go up to the orchard with him. Idella ran out of the room and came back with her hat on, and tugging to get into her shabby little sack. Annie helped her with it, and Idella tucked her hand into Bolton's loose, hard fist, and gave it a pull toward the door.
“Well, I don't see but what she's goin',” he said.
“Yes; you'd better ask her the next time ifIcan go,” said Annie.
“Well, why don't you?” asked Bolton, humouring the joke. “I guess you'd enjoy it about as well as any. We're just goin' for a basket of wind-falls for pies. I guess we ain't a-goin' to be gone a great while.”
Annie watched them up the lane from the library window with a queer grudge at heart; Bolton stiffly lumbering forward at an angle of forty-five degrees, the child whirling and dancing at his side, and now before and now after him.
At the sound of wheels on the gravel before the front door, Annie turned away with such an imperative need of its being Dr. Morrell's buggy that it was almost an intolerable disappointment to find it Mrs. Munger's phaeton.
Mrs. Munger burst in upon her in an excitement which somehow had an effect of premeditation.
“Miss Kilburn, I wish to know what you think of Mr. and Mrs. Putney's behaviour to me, and Mr. Peck's, in my own house, last night. They are friends of yours, and I wish to know if you approve of it. I come to youastheir friend, and I am sure you will feel as I do that my hospitality has been abused. It was an outrage for Mr. Putney to get intoxicated in my house; and for Mr. Peck to attack me as he did before everybody, because Mr. Putney had taken advantage of his privileges, was abominable. I am not a member of his church; and even if I were, he would have had no right to speak so to me.”
Annie felt the blood fly to her head, and she waited a moment to regain her coolness. “I wonder you came to ask me, Mrs. Munger, if you were so sure that I agreed with you. I'm certainly Mr. and Mrs. Putney's friend, and so far as admiring Mr. Peck's sincerity and goodness is concerned, I'mhisfriend. But I'm obliged to say that you're mistaken about the rest.”
She folded her hands at her waist, and stood up very straight, looking firmly at Mrs. Munger, who made a show of taking a new grip of her senses as she sank unbidden into a chair.
“Why, what do you mean, Miss Kilburn?”
“It seems to me that I needn't say.”
“Why, but you must! Youmust, you know. I can't beleftso! I must know where Istand! I must be sure of myground! I can't go on without understanding just how much you mean by my being mistaken.”
She looked Annie in the face with eyes superficially expressive of indignant surprise, and Annie perceived that she wished to restore herself in her own esteem by browbeating some one else into the affirmation of her innocence.
“Well, if you must know, Mrs. Munger, I mean that you ought to have remembered Mr. Putney's infirmity, and that it was cruel to put temptation in his way. Everybody knows that he can't resist it, and that he is making such a hard fight to keep out of it. And then, if you press me for an opinion, I must say that you were not justifiable in asking Mr. Peck to take part in a social entertainment when we had explicitly dropped that part of the affair.”
Mrs. Munger had not pressed Annie for an opinion on this point at all; but in their interest in it they both ignored the fact. Mrs. Munger tacitly admitted her position in retorting, “He needn't have stayed.”
“You made him stay—you remember how—and he couldn't have got away without being rude.”
“And you think he wasn't rude to scold me before my guests?”
“He told you the truth. He didn't wish to say anything, but you forced him to speak, just as you have forced me.”
“Forcedyou? Miss Kilburn!”
“Yes. I don't at all agree with Mr. Peck in many things, but he is a good man, and last night he spoke the truth. I shouldn't be speaking it if I didn't tell you I thought so.”
“Very well, then,” said Mrs. Munger, rising.
“After this you can't expect me to have anything to do with the Social Union; you couldn'twishme to, if that's your opinion of my character.”
“I haven't expressed any opinion of your character, Mrs. Munger, if you'll remember, please; and as for the Social Union, I shall have nothing further to do with it myself.”
Annie drew herself up a little higher, and silently waited for her visitor to go.
But Mrs. Munger remained.
“I don't believe Mrs. Putney herself would say what you have said,” she remarked, after an embarrassing moment. “If it were really so I should be willing to make any reparation—to acknowledge it. Will you go with me to Mrs. Putney's? I have my phaeton here, and—”
“I shouldn't dream of going to Mrs. Putney's with you.”
Mrs. Munger urged, with the effect of invincible argument: “I've been down in the village, and I've talked to a good many about it—some of them hadn't heard of it before—and I must say, Miss Kilburn, that people generally take a very different view of it from what you do. They think that my hospitality has been shamefully abused. Mr. Gates said he should think I would have Mr. Putney arrested. But I don't care for all that. What I wish is to prove to you that I am right; and if I can go with you to call on Mrs. Putney, I shall not care what any one else says. Will you come?”
“Certainly not,” cried Annie.
They both stood a moment, and in this moment Dr. Morrell drove up, and dropped his hitching-weight beyond Mrs. Munger's phaeton.
As he entered she said: “We will let Dr. Morrell decide. I've been asking Miss Kilburn to go with me to Mrs. Putney's. I think it would be a graceful and proper thing for me to do, to express my sympathy and interest, and to hear what Mrs. Putney really has to say. Don'tyouthink I ought to go to see her, doctor?”
The doctor laughed. “I can't prescribe in matters of social duty. But what do you want to see Mrs. Putney for?”
“What for? Why, doctor, on account of Mr. Putney—what took place last night.”
“Yes? What was that?”
“What wasthat? Why, his strange behaviour—his—his intoxication.”
“Was he intoxicated? Did you think so?”
“Why, you were there, doctor. Didn't you think so?”
Annie looked at him with as much astonishment as Mrs. Munger.
The doctor laughed again. “You can't always tell when Putney's joking; he's a great joker. Perhaps he was hoaxing.”
“Oh doctor, do you think hecouldhave been?” said Mrs. Munger, with clasped hands. “It would make me the happiest woman in the world! I'd forgive him all he's made me suffer. Butyou'rejokingnow, doctor?”
“You can't tell when people are joking. If I'm not, does it follow that I'm really intoxicated?”
“Oh, but that's nonsense, Dr. Morrell. That's mere—what do you call it?—chop logic. But I don't mind it. I grasp at a straw.” Mrs. Munger grasped at a straw of the mind, to show how. “But whatdoyou mean?”
“Well, Mrs. Putney wasn't intoxicated last night, but she's not well this morning. I'm afraid she couldn't see you.”
“Just as yousay, doctor,” cried Mrs. Munger, with mounting cheerfulness. “IwishI knew just how much you meant, and how little.” She moved closer to the doctor, and bent a look of candid fondness upon him. “But I know you're trying to mystify me.”
She pursued him with questions which he easily parried, smiling and laughing. At the end she left him to Annie, with adieux that were almost radiant. “Anyhow, I shall take the benefit of the doubt, and if Mr. Putney was hoaxing, I shall not give myself away.Dofind out what he means, Miss Kilburn, won't you?” She took hold of Annie's unoffered hand, and pressed it in a double leathern grasp, and ran out of the room with a lightness of spirit which her physical bulk imperfectly expressed.
“Well?” said Annie, to the change which came over Morrell's face when Mrs. Munger was gone.
“Oh, it's a miserable business! He must go on now to the end of his debauch. He's got past doing any mischief, I'm thankful to say. But I had hoped to tide him over a while longer, and now that fool has spoiled everything. Well!”
Annie's heart warmed to his vexation, and she postponed another emotion. “Yes, sheisa fool. I wish you had qualified the term, doctor.”
They looked at each other solemnly, and then laughed. “It won't do for a physician to swear,” said Morrell. “I wish you'd give me a cup of coffee. I've been up all night.”
“With Ralph?”
“With Putney.”
“You shall have it instantly; that is, as instantly as Mrs. Bolton can kindle up a fire and make it.” She went out to the kitchen, and gave the order with an imperiousness which she softened in Dr. Morrell's interest by explaining rather fully to Mrs. Bolton.
When she came back she wanted to talk seriously, tragically, about Putney. But the doctor would not. He said that it paid to sit up with Putney, drunk or sober, and hear him go on. He repeated some things Putney said about Mr. Peck, about Gerrish, about Mrs. Munger.
“But why did you try to put her off in that way—to make her believe he wasn't intoxicated?” asked Annie, venting her postponed emotion, which was of disapproval.
“I don't know. It came into my head. But she knows better.”
“It was rather cruel; not that she deserves any mercy. She caught so at the idea.”
“Oh yes, I saw that. She'll humbug herself with it, and you'll see that before night there'll be two theories of Putney's escapade. I think the last will be the popular one. It will jump with the general opinion of Putney's ability to carry anything out. And Mrs. Munger will do all she can to support it.”
Mrs. Bolton brought in the coffee-pot, and Annie hesitated a moment, with her hand on it, before pouring out a cup.
“I don't like it,” she said.
“I know you don't. But you can say that it wasn't Putney who hoaxed Mrs. Munger, but Dr. Morrell.”
“Oh, you didn't either of you hoax her.”
“Well, then, there's no harm done.”
“I'm not so sure.”
“And you won't give me any coffee?”
“Oh yes, I'll give you somecoffee,” said Annie, with a sigh of baffled scrupulosity that made them both laugh.
He broke out again after he had begun to drink his coffee.
“Well?” she demanded, from her own lapse into silence.
“Oh, nothing! Only Putney. He wants Brother Peck, as he calls him, to unite all the religious elements of Hatboro' in a church of his own, and send out missionaries to the heathen of South Hatboro' to preach a practical Christianity. He makes South Hatboro' stand for all that's worldly and depraved.”
“Poor Ralph! Is that the way he talks?”
“Oh, not all the time. He talks a great many other ways.”
“I wonder you can laugh.”
“He's been very severe on Brother Peck for neglecting the discipline of his child. He says he ought to remember his duty to others, and save the community from having the child grow up into a capricious, wilful woman. Putney was very hard upon your sex, Miss Kilburn. He attributed nearly all the trouble in the world to women's wilfulness and caprice.”
He looked across the table at her with his merry eyes, whose sweetness she felt even in her sudden preoccupation with the notion which she now launched upon him, leaning forward and pushing some books and magazines aside, as if she wished to have nothing between her need and his response.
“Dr. Morrell, what should you think of my asking Mr. Peck to give me his little girl?”
“To give you his—”
“Yes. Let me take Idella—keep her—adopt her! I've nothing to do, as you know very well, and she'd be an occupation; and it would be far better for her. What Ralph says is true. She's growing up without any sort of training; and I think if she keeps on she will be mischievous to herself and every one else.”
“Really?” asked the doctor. “Is it so bad as that?”
“Of course not. And of course I don't want Mr. Peck to renounce all claim to his child; but to let me have her for the present, or indefinitely, and get her some decent clothes, and trim her hair properly, and give her some sort of instruction—”
“May I come in?” drawled Mrs. Wilmington's mellow voice, and Annie turned and saw Lyra peering round the edge of the half-opened library door. “I've been discreetly hemming and scraping and hammering on the wood-work so as not to overhear, and I'd have gone away if I hadn't been afraid of being overheard.”
“Oh, come in, Lyra,” said Annie; and she hoped that she had kept the spirit of resignation with which she spoke out of her voice.
Dr. Morrell jumped up with an apparent desire to escape that wounded and exasperated her. She put out her hand quite haughtily to him and asked, “Oh, must you go?”
“Yes. How do you do, Mrs. Wilmington? You'd better get Miss Kilburn to give you a cup of her coffee.”
“Oh, I will,” said Lyra. She forbore any reference, even by a look, to the intimate little situation she had disturbed.
Morrell added to Annie: “I like your plan. It's the best thing you could do.”
She found she had been keeping his hand, and in the revulsion from wrath to joy she violently wrung it.
“I'msoglad!” She could not help following him to the door, in the hope that he would say something more, but he did not, and she could only repeat her rapturous gratitude in several forms of incoherency.
She ran back to Mrs. Wilmington. “Lyra, what do you think of my taking Mr. Peck's little girl?”
Mrs. Wilmington never allowed herself to seem surprised at anything; she was, in fact, surprised at very few things. She had got into the easiest chair in the room, and she answered from it, with a luxurious interest in the affair, “Well, you know what people will say, Annie.”
“No, I don't.Whatwill they say?”
“That you're after Mr. Peck pretty openly.”
Annie turned scarlet. “And when they find I'mnot?” she demanded with severity, that had no effect upon Lyra.
“Then they'll say you couldn't get him.”
“They may say what they please. What do you think of the plan?”
“I think it would be the greatest blessing for the poor little thing,” said Lyra, with a nearer approach to seriousness than she usually made. “And the greatest care for you,” she added, after a moment.
“I shall not care for the care. I shall be glad of it—thankful for it,” cried Annie fervidly.
“If you can get it,” Lyra suggested.
“I believe I can get it. I believe I can make Mr. Peck see that it's a duty. I shall ask him to regard it as a charity to me—as a mercy.”
“Well, that's a good way to work upon Mr. Peck's feelings,” said Lyra demurely. “Was that the plan that Dr. Morrell approved of so highly?”
“Yes.”
“I didn't know but it was some course of treatment. You pressed his hand so affectionately. I said to myself, Well, Annie's either an enthusiastic patient, or else—”
“What?” demanded Annie, at the little stop Lyra made.
“Well, you know what people dosay, Annie.”
“What?”
“Why, that you're very much out of health, or—” Lyra made another of her tantalising stops.
“Or what?”
“Or Dr. Morrell is very much in love.”
“Lyra, I can't allow you to say such things to me.”
“No; that's what I've kept saying to myself all the time. But you would have itoutof me.Ididn't want to say it.”
It was impossible to resist Lyra's pretended deprecation. Annie laughed. “I suppose I can't help people's talking, and I ought to be too old to care.”
“You ought, but you're not,” said Lyra flatteringly. “Well, Annie, what do you think of our little evening at Mrs. Munger's in the dim retrospect? Poor Ralph! What did the doctor say about him?” She listened with so keen a relish for the report of Putney's sayings that Annie felt as if she had been turning the affair into comedy for Lyra's amusement. “Oh dear, I wish I could hear him! I thought I should have died last night when he came back, and began to scare everybody blue with his highly personal remarks. I wish he'd had time to get round to the Northwicks.”
“Lyra,” said Annie, nerving herself to the office; “don't you think it was wicked to treat that poor girl as you did?”
“Well, I suppose that's the way some people might look at it,” said Lyra dispassionately.
“Then how—howcould you do it?”
“Oh, it's easy enough to behave wickedly, Annie, when you feel like it,” said Lyra, much amused by Annie's fervour, apparently. “Besides, I don't know that it was soverywicked. What makes you think it was?”
“Oh, it wasn't that merely. Lyra, may I—mayI speak to you plainly, frankly—like a sister?” Annie's heart filled with tenderness for Lyra, with the wish to help her, to save a person who charmed her so much.
“Well, like astep-sister, you may,” said Lyra demurely.
“It wasn't for her sake alone that I hated to see it. It was for your sake—forhissake.”
“Well, that's very kind of you, Annie,” said Lyra, without the least resentment. “And I know what you mean. But it really doesn't hurt either Jack or me. I'm not very goody-goody, Annie; I don't pretend to be; but I'm not very baddy-baddy either. I assure you”—Lyra laughed mischievously—“I'm one of the very few persons in Hatboro' who are better than they should be.”
“I know it, Lyra—I know it. But you have no right to keep him from taking a fancy to some young girl—and marrying her; to keep him to yourself; to make people talk.”
“There's something in that,” Lyra assented, with impartiality. “But I don't think it would be well for Jack to marry yet; and if I see him taking a fancy to any real nice girl, I sha'n't interfere with him. But I shall be veryparticular, Annie.”
She looked at Annie with such a droll mock earnest, and shook her head with such a burlesque of grandmotherly solicitude, that Annie laughed in spite of herself. “Oh, Lyra, Lyra!”
“And as for me,” Lyra went on, “I assure you I don't care for the little bit of harm it does me.”
“But you ought—you ought!” cried Annie. “You ought to respect yourself enough to care. You ought to respect other women enough.”
“Oh, I guess I'd let the balance of the sex slide, Annie,” said Lyra.
“No, you mustn't; you can't. We are all bound together; we owe everything to each other.”
“Isn't that rather Peckish?” Lyra suggested.
“I don't know. But it's true, Lyra. And I shouldn't be ashamed of getting it from Mr. Peck.”
“Oh, I didn't say you would be.”
“And I hope you won't be hurt with me. I know that it's a most unwarrantable thing to speak to you about such a matter; but you know why I do it.”
“Yes, I suppose it's because you like me; and I appreciate that, I assure you, Annie.”
Lyra was soberer than she had yet been, and Annie felt that she was really gaining ground. “And your husband; you ought to respecthim—”
Lyra laughed out with great relish. “Oh, now, Annie, youarejoking! Why in theworldshould I respect Mr. Wilmington? An old man like him marrying a young girl like me!” She jumped up and laughed at the look in Annie's face. “Will you go round with me to the Putneys? thought Ellen might like to see us.”
“No, no. I can't go,” said Annie, finding it impossible to recover at once from the quite unanswerable blow her sense of decorum—she thought it her moral sense—had received.
“Well, you'll be glad to havemego, anyway,” said Lyra. She saw Annie shrinking from her, and she took hold of her, and pulled her up and kissed her. “You dear old thing! I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the world. And whichever it is, Annie, the parson or the doctor, I wish him joy.”
That afternoon, as Annie was walking to the village, the doctor drove up to the sidewalk, and stopped near her. “Miss Kilburn, I've got a letter from home. They write me about my mother in a way that makes me rather anxious, and I shall run down to Chelsea this evening.”
“Oh, I'm sorry for your bad news. I hope it's nothing serious.”
“She's old; that's the only cause for anxiety. But of course I must go.”
“Oh yes, indeed. I do hope you'll find all right with her.”
“Thank you very much. I'm sorry that I must leave Putney at such a time. But I leave him with Mr. Peck, who's promised to be with him. I thought you'd like to know.”
“Yes, I do; it's very kind of you—very kind indeed.”
“Thank you,” said the doctor. It was not the phrase exactly, but it served the purpose of the cordial interest in which they parted as well as another.
During the days that Mr. Peck had consented to leave Idella with her Annie took the whole charge of the child, and grew into an intimacy with her that was very sweet. It was not necessary to this that Idella should be always tractable and docile, which she was not, but only that she should be affectionate and dependent; Annie found that she even liked her to be a little baddish; it gave her something to forgive; and she experienced a perverse pleasure in discovering that the child of a man so self-forgetful as Mr. Peck was rather more covetous than most children. It also amused her that when some of Idella's shabby playmates from Over the Track casually found their way to the woods past Annie's house, and tried to tempt Idella to go with them, the child disowned them, and ran into the house from them; so soon was she alienated from her former life by her present social advantages. She apparently distinguished between Annie and the Boltons, or if not quite this, she showed a distinct preference for her company, and for her part of the house. She hung about Annie with a flattering curiosity and interest in all she did. She lost every trace of shyness with her, but developed an intense admiration for her in every way—for her dresses, her rings, her laces, for the elegancies that marked her a gentlewoman. She pronounced them prettier than Mrs. Warner's things, and the house prettier and larger.
“Should you like to live with me?” Annie asked.
The child seemed to reflect. Then she said, with the indirection of her age and sex, pushing against Annie's knee, “I don't know what your name is.”
“Have you never heard my name? It's Annie. How do you like it?”
“It's—it's too short,” said the child, from her readiness always to answer something that charmed Annie.
“Well, then you can make it longer. You can call me Aunt Annie. I think that will be better for a little girl; don't you?”
“Mothers can whip, but aunts can't,” said Idella, bringing a practical knowledge, acquired from her observation of life Over the Track, to a consideration of the proposed relation.
“I knowoneaunt who won't,” said Annie, touched by the reply.
Saturday evening Idella's father came for her; and with a preamble which seemed to have been unnecessary when he understood it, Annie asked him to let her keep the child, at least till he had settled himself in a house of his own, or, she hinted, in some way more comfortable for Idella than he was now living. In her anxiety to make him believe that she was not taking too great a burden on her hands, she became slowly aware that no fear of this had apparently troubled him, and that he was looking at the whole matter from a point outside of questions of polite ceremonial, even of personal feeling.
She was vexed a little with his insensibility to the favour she meant the child, and she could not help trying to make him realise it. “I don't promise always to be the best guide, philosopher, and friend that Idella could have”—she took this light tone because she found herself afraid of him—“but I think I shall be a little improvement on some of her friends Over the Track. At least, if she wants my cat, she shall have it without fighting for it.”
Mr. Peck looked up with question, and she went on to tell him of a struggle which she had seen one day between Idella and a small Irish boy for a kitten; it really belonged to the boy, but Idella carried it off.
The minister listened attentively. At the end: “Yes,” he said, “that lust of possession is something all but impossible, even with constant care, to root out of children. I have tried to teach Idella that nothing is rightfully hers except while she can use it; but it is hard to make her understand, and when she is with other children she forgets.”
Annie could not believe at first that he was serious, and then she was disposed to laugh. “Really, Mr. Peck,” she began, “I can't think it's so important that a little thing like Idella should be kept from coveting a kitten as that she should be kept from using naughty words and from scratching and biting.”
“I know,” Mr. Peck consented. “That is the usual way of looking at such things.”
“It seems to me,” said Annie, “that it's the common-sense way.”
“Perhaps. But upon the whole, I don't agree with you. It is bad for the child to use naughty words and to scratch and bite; that's part of the warfare in which we all live; but it's worse for her to covet, and to wish to keep others from having.”
“I don't wonder you find it hard to make her understand that.”
“Yes, it's hard with all of us. But if it is ever to be easier we must begin with the children.”
He was silent, and Annie did not say anything. She was afraid that she had not helped her cause. “At least,” she finally ventured, “you can't object to giving Idella a little rest from the fray. Perhaps if she finds that she can get things without fighting for them, she'll not covet them so much.”
“Yes,” he said, with a dim smile that left him sad again, “there is some truth in that. But I'm not sure that I have the right to give her advantages of any kind, to lift her above the lot, the chance, of the least fortunate—”
“Surely, we are bound to provide for those of our own household,” said Annie.
“Who are those of our own household?” asked the minister. “All mankind are those of our own household. These are my mother and my brother and my sister.”
“Yes, I know,” said Annie, somewhat eagerly quitting this difficult ground. “But you can leave her with me at least till you get settled,” she faltered, “if you don't wish it to be for longer.”
“Perhaps it may not be for long,” he answered, “if you mean my settlement in Hatboro'. I doubt,” he continued, lifting his eyes to the question in hers, “whether I shall remain here.”
“Oh, I hope you will,” cried Annie. She thought she must make a pretence of misunderstanding him. “I supposed you were very much satisfied with your work here.”
“I am not satisfied with myself in my work,” replied the minister; “and I know that I am far from acceptable to many others in it.”
“You are acceptable to those who are best able to appreciate you, Mr. Peck,” she protested, “and to people of every kind. I'm sure it's only a question of time when you will be thoroughly acceptable to all. I want you to understand, Mr. Peck,” she added, “that I was shocked and ashamed the other night at your being tricked into countenancing a part of the entertainment you were promised should be dropped. I had nothing to do with it.”
“It was very unimportant, after all,” the minister said, “as far as I was concerned. In fact, I was interested to see the experiment of bringing the different grades of society together.”
“It seems to me it was an utter failure,” suggested Annie.
“Quite. But it was what I expected.”
There appeared an uncandour in this which Annie could not let pass even if it imperilled her present object to bring up the matter of past contention. “But when we first talked of the Social Union you opposed it because it wouldn't bring the different classes together.”
“Did you understand that? Then I failed to make myself clear. I wished merely to argue that the well-meaning ladies who suggested it were not intending a social union at all. In fact, such a union in our present condition of things, with its division of classes, is impossible—as Mrs. Munger's experiment showed—with the best will on both sides. But, as I said, the experiment was interesting, though unimportant, except as it resulted in heart-burning and offence.”
They were on the same ground, but they had reached it from starting-points so opposite that Annie felt it very unsafe. In her fear of getting into some controversy with Mr. Peck that might interfere with her designs regarding Idella, she had a little insincerity in saying: “Mrs. Munger's bad faith in that was certainly unimportant compared with her part in poor Mr. Putney's misfortune. That was the worst thing; that's what Ican'tforgive.”
Mr. Peck said nothing to this, and Annie, somewhat daunted by his silence, proceeded. “I've had the satisfaction of telling her what I thought on both points. But Ralph—Mr. Putney—I hear, has escaped this time with less than his usual—”
She did not know what lady-like word to use for spree, and so she stopped.
Mr. Peck merely said, “He has shown great self-control;” and she perceived that he was not going to say more. He listened patiently to the reasons she gave for not having offered Mrs. Putney anything more than passive sympathy at a time when help could only have cumbered and kindness wounded her, but he made no sign of thinking them either necessary or sufficient. In the meantime he had not formally consented to Idella's remaining with her, and Annie prepared to lead back to that affair as artfully as she could.
“I really want you to believe, Mr. Peck, that I think very differently onsomepoints from what I did when we first talked about the Social Union, and I have you to thank for seeing things in a new light. And you needn't,” she added lightly, “be afraid of my contaminating Idella's mind with any wicked ideas. I'll do my best to keep her from coveting kittens or property of any kind; though I've always heard my father say that civilisation was founded upon the instinct of ownership, and that it was the only thing that had advanced the world. And if you dread the danger of giving her advantages, as you say, or bettering her worldly lot,” she continued, with a smile for his quixotic scruples, “why, I'll do my best to reduce her blessings to a minimum; though I don't see why the poor little thing shouldn't get some good from the inequalities that there always must be in the world.”
“I am not sure there always must be inequalities in the world,” answered the minister.
“There always have been,” cried Annie.
“There always had been slavery, up to a certain time,” he replied.
“Oh, but surely you don't compare the two!” Annie pleaded with what she really regarded as a kind of lunacy in the good man. “In the freest society, I've heard my father say, there is naturally an upward and downward tendency; a perfect level is impossible. Some must rise, and some must sink.”
“But what do you mean by rising? If you mean in material things, in wealth and the power over others that it gives—”
“I don't mean that altogether. But there are other ways—in cultivation, refinement, higher tastes and aims than the great mass of people can have. You have risen yourself, Mr. Peck.”
“I have risen, as you call it,” he said, with a meek sufferance of the application of the point to himself. “Those who rise above the necessity of work for daily bread are in great danger of losing their right relation to other men, as I said when we talked of this before.”
A point had remained in Annie's mind from her first talk with Dr. Morrell. “Yes; and you said once that there could be no sympathy between the rich and the poor—no real love—because they had not had the same experience of life. But how is it about the poor who become rich? They have had the same experience.”
“Too often they make haste to forget that they were poor; they become hard masters to those they have left behind them. They are eager to identify themselves with those who have been rich longer than they. Some working-men who now see this clearly have the courage to refuse to rise. Miss Kilburn, why should I let you take my child out of the conditions of self-denial and self-help to which she was born?”
“I don't know,” said Annie rather blankly. Then she added impetuously: “Because I love her and want her. I don't—Iwon't—pretend that it's for her sake. It's formysake, though I can take better care of her than you can. But I'm all alone in the world; I've neither kith nor kin; nothing but my miserable money. I've set my heart on the child; I must have her. At least let me keep her a while. I will be honest with you, Mr. Peck. If I find I'm doing her harm and not good, I'll give her up. I should wish you to feel that she is yours as much as ever, and if youwillfeel so, and come often to see her—I—I shall—be very glad, and—” she stopped, and Mr. Peck rose.
“Where is the child?” he asked, with a troubled air; and she silently led the way to the kitchen, and left him at the door to Idella and the Boltons. When she ventured back later he was gone, but the child remained.
Half exultant and half ashamed, she promised herself that she really would be true as far as possible to the odd notions of the minister in her treatment of his child. When she undressed Idella for bed she noticed again the shabbiness of her poor little clothes. She went through the bureau that held her own childish things once more, but found them all too large for Idella, and too hopelessly antiquated. She said to herself that on this point at least she must be a law to herself.
She went down to see Mrs. Bolton. “Isn't there some place in the village where they have children's ready-made clothes for sale?” she asked.
“Mr. Gerrish's,” said Mrs. Bolton briefly.
Annie shook her head, drawing in her breath. “I shouldn't want to go there. Is there nowhere else?”
“There's a Jew place. They say he cheats.”
“I dare say he doesn't cheat more than most Christians,” said Annie, jumping from her chair. “I'll try the Jew place. I want you to come with me, Mrs. Bolton.”
They went together, and found a dress that they both decided would fit Idella, and a hat that matched it.
“I don't know as he'd like to have anything quite so nice,” said Mrs. Bolton coldly.
“I don't know as he has anything to say about it,” said Annie, mimicking Mrs. Bolton's accent and syntax.
They both meant Mr. Peck. Mrs. Bolton turned away to hide her pleasure in Annie's audacity and extravagance.
“Want I should carry 'em?” she asked, when they were out of the store.
“No, I can carry them,” said Annie.
She put them where Idella must see them as soon as she woke.
It was late before she slept, and Idella's voice broke upon her dreams. The child was sitting up in her bed, gloating upon the dress and hat hung and perched upon the chair-back in the middle of the room. “Oh, whose is it? Whose is it? Whose is it?” she screamed; and as Annie lifted herself on her elbow, and looked over at her: “Is it mine? Is it mine?”
Annie had thought of playing some joke; of pretending not to understand; of delaying the child's pleasure; playing with it; teasing. But in the face of this rapturous longing, she could only answer, “Yes.”
“Mine? My very own? To have? To keep always?”
“Yes.”
Idella sprang from her bed, and flew upon the things with a primitive, greedy transport in their possession. She could scarcely be held long enough to be washed before the dress could be put on.
“Be careful—be careful not to get it soiled now,” said Annie.
“No; I won't spoil it.” She went quietly downstairs, and when Annie followed, she found her posing before the long pier-glass in the parlour, and twisting and turning for this effect and that. All the morning she moved about prim and anxious; the wild-wood flower was like a hot-house blossom wired for a bouquet. At the church door she asked Idella, “Would you rather sit with Mrs. Bolton?”
“No, no,” gasped the child intensely; “withyou!” and she pushed her hand into Annie's, and held fast to it.
Annie's question had been suggested by a belated reluctance to appear before so much of Hatboro' in charge of the minister's child. But now she could not retreat, and with Idella's hand in hers she advanced blushing up the aisle to her pew.