The Very Small Person

The next day the Child loved her father, for it was Tuesday. She went about it in her thorough, conscientious little way. She had made out a little programme. At the top of the sheet, in her clear, upright hand, was, “Ways to Love My farther.” And after that:

“1. Bringing in his newspaper.

“2. Kissing Him goodmorning.

“3. Rangeing his studdy table.

“4. Putting flours on " "

“5. Takeing up His male.

“6. Reeching up to rub My cheak against his cheak.

“7. Lerning to read so I can read His Books.”

There were many other items. The Child had used three pages for her programme. The last two lines read:

“Praing for Him.

“Kissing Him goodnight.”

The Wednesday programme was almost identical with this one, with the exception of “my mother” instead of “my farther.” For the Child did not wish to be partial. She had always had a secret notion that it would be a little easier to read her mother’s books, but she meant to read just as many of her “farther’s.”

During the morning she went in to the Lady and reported progress so far. Her cheeks were a delicate pink with excitement, and she panted a little when she spoke.

“I’m getting along splendidly,” she said, smiling up at the beautiful face. “Perhaps – of course I can’t tell for sure, but I’m not certain but that he will like it after he gets used to it. You have to get used to things. He liked the flowers, and when I rubbed my cheek ’gainst his, and when I kissed him. How I know he did is because he smiled – I wish my father would smile all the time.”

The Child did not leave the room when she had finished her report, but fidgeted about the great silent place uncertainly. She turned back by-and-by to the Lady.

“There’s something I wish you could tell me,” she said, with her wistful little face uplifted. “It’s if you think it would be polite to ask my father to put me to bed instead of Marie – just unbutton me, you know, and pray me. I was going to ask my mother to-morrow night if my father did to-night. I thought – I thought” – the Child hesitated for adequate words – “it would be the lovingest way to love him, for you feel a little intimater with persons when they put you to bed. Sometimes I feel that way with Marie – a very little. I wish you could nod your head if you thought it would be polite.”

The Child’s eyes, fastened upon the picture, were intently serious. And again the Lady seemed to nod.

“Oh, you’re nodding, yes! – I b’lieve you’re nodding yes! Thank you ve-ry much – now I shall ask him to. Good-bye. Give my love to the baby.” And the little figure moved away sedately.

To ask him in the manner of a formal invitation with “yours very truly” in it appeared to the Child upon thoughtful deliberation to be the best way. She did not feel very intimate yet with her father, but of course it might be different after he unbuttoned her and prayed her.

Hence the formal invitation:

“Dear farther you are respectably invited to put yore little girl to bed tonite at ½ past 7. Yores very truely

Elizabeth.

“R s v p.

P.s. the little girl is me.”

It was all original except the “R s v p” and the fraction. The Child had asked Marie how to write “half,” and the other she had found in the corner of one of her mother’s formal invitations. She did not know what the four letters meant, but they made the invitation look nicer, and she could make lovely capital “R’s.”

At lunch-time the Child stole up-stairs and deposited her little folded note on top of her father’s manuscript. Her heart beat strangely fast as she did it. She had still a lurking fear that it might not be polite.

On the way back she hurried into the company-room, up to the Lady. “I’ve done it!” she reported, breathlessly. “I hope it was polite – oh, I hope he will!”

The Child’s father ate his lunch silently and a little hastily, as if to get it over. On the opposite side of the table the Child’s mother ate hers silently and a little hastily. It was the usual way of their meals. The few casual things they said had to do with the weather or the salad. Then it was over and they separated, each to his own side of the divided house.

The father took up his pen to write – it seemed all there was left to do now. But the tiny folded note arrested his hand, and he stared in amazement. The Child had inadvertently set her seal upon it in the form of a little finger-print. So he knew it was hers. The first shock of hope it had awakened subsided into mere curiosity. But when he opened it, when he read it —

He sat a long time very still indeed – so still he could hear the rustle of manuscript pages in the other writing-room across the hall. Perhaps he sat there nearly all the afternoon, for the shadows lengthened before he seemed to move.

In the rush of thoughts that came to him two stood out most clearly – the memory of an awful day, when he had seemed to die a thousand deaths, and only come to life when a white-capped nurse came smiling to him and said, “It is a little girl,” and the memory of a day two years ago, when a man and a woman had faced each other and said, “We will try to bear it for the child.”

The Child found her answer lying on her plate at nursery tea. Marie, who was bustling about the room getting things orderly for the night, heard a little gasp and turned in alarm. The Child was spelling out her letter with a radiant face that belied the gasp. There was something in the lonely little figure’s eagerness that appealed even to the unemotional maid, and for a moment there was likelihood of a strange thing happening. But the crisis was quickly over, and Marie, with the kiss unkissed on her lips, went on with her work. Emotions were rare with Marie.

“‘Dear Little Girl, Who Is You,’” spelled the Child, in a soft ecstasy, yet not without dread of what might come, supposing he thought she had been impo —

“‘Dear Little Girl, Who Is You,’” she hurriedly began again, “‘your farther will be happy to accept your kind invitation for ½ past 7 this evening. Will you please call for him, as he is a little – b-a-s-h-f-u-l’ – Marie, what does b-a-s-h-f-u-l spell?” shrilled the eager voice. It was a new word.

Marie came over to the Child’s chair. “How can I tell without I see it?” she said. But the Child drew away gently.

“This is a very intimate letter – you’ll have to ’xcuse seeing it. Never mind, anyway, thank you, – I can guess it.” And she guessed that it spelled the way she would feel when she called for her father at half-past seven, for the Child was a little bashful, too. She told the Lady so.

“I don’t dread it; I just wish it was over,” she explained. “It makes me feel a little queer, you see. Probably you wouldn’t feel that way if you was better acquainted with a person. Fathers and mothers are kind of strangers.”

She was ready at seven o’clock, and sat, a little patient statue, watching the nursery clock. Marie, who had planned to go out and had intended setting the hands of the clock ahead a little, was unwarrantably angry with the Child for sitting there so persistently. “Come,” she said, impatiently; “I’ve got your night-gown ready. This clock’s too slow.”

“Truly, is it?” the Child questioned, anxiously. “Slow means it’s ’most half-past, doesn’t it? Then I ought to be going!”

“Yes, – come along;” but Marie meant to bed, and the Child was already on her way to her father. She hurried back on second thought to explain to Marie.

“I’ve engaged somebody – there’s somebody else going to put me to bed to-night. You needn’t wait, Marie,” she said, her voice oddly subdued and like some other little girl’s voice in her repressed excitement.

He was waiting for her. He had been ready since half-past six o’clock. Without a word – with only an odd little smile that set the Child at ease – he took her hand and went back with her. The door of the other writing-room was ajar, and they caught a glimpse as they went by of a slender, stooping figure. It did not turn.

“This is my room,” the Child introduced, gayly. The worst was over now and all the rest was best. “You’ve never been in my room before, have you? This is where I keep my clothes, and this is my undressing-chair. This is where Marie sits – you’re Marie to-night!” The Child’s voice rang out in sudden, sweet laughter. It was such a funny idea! She was not a laughing Child, and the little, rippling sound had the effect of escaping from imprisonment and exulting at its freedom.

“You never unbuttoned a little girl before, did you? I’ll have to learn you.”

“Teach you,” he corrected, gently.

“Marie says learn you. But of course I’ll say ‘teach’ if you like it better,” with the ready courtesy of a hostess. “You begin with my feet and go backwards!” Again the escaped laughter. The Child was happy.

Down the hall where the slender figure stooped above the delicately written pages the little laugh travelled again and again. By-and-by another laugh, deep and rich, came hand in hand with it. Then the figure straightened tensely, for this new laugh was rarer even than the Child’s. Two years – two years and more since she had heard this one.

“Now it is time to pray me,” the Child said, dropping into sudden solemnity. “Marie lets me kneel to her – ” hesitating questioningly. Then: “It’s pleasanter to kneel to somebody – ”

“Kneel to me,” he whispered. His face grew a little white, and his hand, when he caressed lightly the frolic-rumpled little head, was not steady. The stone mask of the man dropped off completely, and underneath was tenderness and pain and love.

“Now I lame me down to sleep – no, I want to say another one to-night, Lord God, if Thee please. This is a very particular night, because my father is in it. Bless my father, Lord God, oh, bless my father! This is his day. I’ve loved him all day, and I’m going to again day after to-morrow. But to-morrow I must love my mother. It would be easier to love them both forever and ever, Amen.”

The Child slipped into bed and slept happily, but the man who was father of the Child had new thoughts to think, and it took time. He found he had not thought nearly all of them in his afternoon vigil. On his way back to his lonely study he walked a little slower past the other lonely study. The stooping of the slender figure newly troubled him.

The plan worked satisfactorily to the Child, though there was always the danger of getting the days mixed. The first mother-day had been as “intimate” and delightful as the first father-one. They followed each other intimately and delightfully in a long succession. Marie found her perfunctory services less and less in requisition, and her dazed comprehension of things was divided equally with her self-gratulation. Life in this new and unexpected condition of affairs was easier to Marie.

“I’m having a beautiful time,” the Child one day reported to the Lady, “only sometimes I get a little dizzy trying to remember which is which. My father is which to-day.” And it was at that bedtime, after an unusually active day, that the Child fell asleep at her prayer. Her rumpled head sagged more and more on her delicate neck, till it rested sidewise on the supporting knees, and the Child was asleep.

There was a slight stir in the doorway.

“’Sh! don’t move – sit perfectly still!” came in a whisper as a slender figure moved forward softly into the room.

“Richard, don’t move! The poor little tired thing – do you think you could slip out without moving while I hold up her head – oh, I mean without joggling? Now – oh, mamma’s little tired baby! There, there! – ’Sh! Now you hold her head and let me sit down – now put her here in my arms, Richard.”

The transfer was safely made. They faced each other, she with her baby, he standing looking down at them. Their eyes met steadily. The Child’s regular breathing alone stirred the silence of the little white room. Then he stooped to kiss the Child’s face as she stooped, and their kisses seemed to meet. She did not start away, but smiled instead.

“I want her every day, Richard!” she said.

“I want her every day, Mary!”

“Then there is only one way. Last night she prayed to have things changed round – ”

“Yes, Polly?”

“We’ll change things round, Dick.”

The Child was smiling in her sleep as if she heard them.

Chapter XI

The Recompense

There were all kinds of words, – short ones and long ones. Some were very long. This one – we-ell, maybe it wasn’t so long, for when you’re nine you don’t of course mind three-story words, and this one looked like a three-story one. But this one puzzled you the worst ever!

Morry spelled it through again, searching for light. But it was a very dark word. Rec-om-pense, – if it meant anything money-y, then they’d made a mistake, for of course you don’t spell “pence” with an “s.”

The dictionary was across the room, and you had to stand up to look up things in it, – Morry wished it was not so far away and that you could do it sitting down. He sank back wearily on his cushions and wished other things, too: That Ellen would come in, but that wasn’t a very big wish, because Ellens aren’t any good at looking up words. That dictionaries grew on your side o’ the room, – that wish was a funny one! That Dadsy would come home – oh, oh, that Dadsy would come home!

With that wish, which was a very Big One indeed, came trooping back all Morry’s Troubles. They stood round his easy-chair and pressed up close against him. He hugged the most intimate ones to his little, thin breast.

It was getting twilight in the great, beautiful room, and twilight was trouble-time. Morry had found that out long ago. It’s when it’s too dark to read and too light for Ellens to come and light the lamps that you say “Come in!” to your troubles. They’re always there waiting.

If Dadsy hadn’t gone away to do – that. If he’d just gone on reg’lar business, or on a hurry-trip across the ocean, or something like that. You could count the days and learn pieces to surprise him with when he got back, and keep saying, “Won’t it be splendid!” But this time – well, this time it scared you to have Dadsy come home. And if you learned a hundred pieces you knew you’d never say ’em to him – now. And you kept saying, “Won’t it be puffectly dreadful!”

“Won’t you have the lamps lit, Master Morris?” It was Ellen’s voice, but the Troubles were all talking at once, and much as ever he could hear it.

“I knew you weren’t asleep because your chair creaked, so I says, ‘I guess we’ll light up,’ – it’s enough sight cheerier in the light”; and Ellen’s thuddy steps came through the gloom and frightened away the Troubles.

“Thank you,” Morry said, politely. It’s easy enough to remember to be polite when you have so much time. “Now I’d like Jolly, – you guess he’s got home now, don’t you?”

Ellen’s steps sounded a little thuddier as they tramped back down the hall. “It’s a good thing there’s going to be a Her here to send that common boy kiting!” she was thinking. Yet his patches were all Ellen – so far – had seen in Jolly to find fault with. Though, for that matter, in a house beautiful like this patches were, goodness knew, out of place enough!

“Hully Gee, ain’t it nice an’ light in here!” presently exclaimed a boy’s voice from the doorway.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come, Jolly! Come right in and take a chair, – take two chairs!” laughed Morry, in his excess of welcome. It was always great when Jolly came! He and the Troubles were not acquainted; they were never in the room at the same time.

Morry’s admiration of this small bepatched, befreckled, besmiled being had begun with his legs, which was not strange, they were such puffectly straight, limber, splendid legs and could go– my! Legs like that were great!

But it was noticeable that the legs were in some curious manner telescoped up out of sight, once Jolly was seated. The phenomenon was of common occurrence, – they were always telescoped then. And nothing had ever been said between the two boys about legs. About arms, yes, and eyes, ears, noses, – never legs. If Morry understood the kind little device to save his feelings, an instinctive knowledge that any expression of gratitude would embarrass Jolly must have kept back his ready little thank you.

“Can you hunt up things?” demanded the small host with rather startling energy. He was commonly a quiet, self-contained host. “Because there’s a word – ”

But Jolly had caught up his cap, untelescoped the kind little legs, and was already at the door. Nothing pleased him more than a commission from the Little White Feller in the soft chair there.

“I’ll go hunt, – where’d I be most likely to find him?”

The Little White Feller rarely laughed, but now – “You – you Jolly boy!” he choked, “you’ll find him under a hay-stack fast aslee – No, no!” suddenly grave and solicitous of the other’s feelings, “in the dictionary, I mean. Words, don’t you know?”

“Oh, get out!” grinned the Jolly boy, in glee at having made the Little White Feller laugh out like that, reg’lar-built. “Hand him over, then, but you’ll have to do the spellin’.”

“Rec-om-pense, – p-e-n-s-e,” Morry said, slowly, “I found it in a magazine, – there’s the greatest lot o’ words in magazines! Look up ‘rec,’ Jolly, – I mean, please.”

Dictionaries are terrible books. Jolly had never dreamed there were so many words in the world, – pages and pages and pages of ’em! The prospect of ever finding one particular word was disheartening, but he plunged in sturdily, determination written on every freckle.

“Don’t begin at the first page!” cried Morry, hastily. “Begin at R, – it’s more than half-way through. R-e, – r-e-c, – that way.”

Jolly turned over endless pages, trailed laboriously his little, blunt finger up and down endless columns, wet his lips with the red tip of his tongue endless times, – wished ’twas over. He had meant to begin at the beginning and keep on till he got to a w-r-e-c-k, – at Number Seven they spelled it that way. Hadn’t he lost a mark for spelling it without a “w”? But of course if folks preferred the r kind —

“Hi!” the blunt finger leaped into space and waved triumphantly. “R-e-c-k, – I got him!”

“Not ‘k,’ – there isn’t any ‘k.’ Go backwards till you drop it, Jolly, – you dropped it?”

Dictionaries are terrible, – still, leaving a letter off o’ the end isn’t as bad as off o’ the front. Jolly retraced his steps patiently.

“I’ve dropped it,” he announced in time.

Morry was breathing hard, too. Looking up words with other people’s fore-fingers is pretty tough.

“Now, the second story, – ‘rec’ is the first,” he explained. “You must find ‘rec-om’ now, you know.”

No, Jolly did not know, but he went back to the work undaunted. “We’ll tree him,” he said, cheerily, “but I think I could do it easier if I whistled” —

“Whistle,” Morry said.

With more directions, more hard breathing, more wetting of lips and tireless trailing of small, blunt finger, and then – eureka! there you were! But eureka was not what Jolly said.

“Bully for us!” he shouted. He felt thrilly with pride of conquest. “It’s easy enough finding things. What’s the matter with dictionaries!”

“Now read what it means, Jolly, – I mean, please. Don’t skip.”

“‘Rec-om-pense: An equi-va-lent received or re-turned for anything given, done, or suff-er-ed; comp-ens-a-tion.’”

“That all? – every speck?”

“Well, here’s another one that says ‘To make a-mends,’ if you like that one any better. Sounds like praying.”

“Oh,” sighed Morry, “how I’d like to know what equi-valent means!” but he did not ask the other to look it up. He sank back on his pillows and reasoned things out for himself the best way he could. “To make amends” he felt sure meant to make up. To make up for something given or suffered, – perhaps that was what a Rec-om-pense was. For something given or suffered – like legs, maybe? Limp, no-good-legs that wouldn’t go? Could there be a Rec-om-pense for those? Could anything ever “make up”?

“Supposing you hadn’t any legs, Jolly, – that would go?” he said, aloud, with disquieting suddenness. Jolly started, but nodded comprehendingly. He had not had any legs for a good many minutes; the telescoping process is numbing in the extreme.

“Do you think anything could ever Rec-om-pense – make up, you know? Especially if you suffered? Please don’t speak up quick, – think, Jolly.”

“I’m a-thinkin’.” Not to have ’em that would go, – not go! Never to kite after Dennis O’Toole’s ice-wagon an’ hang on behind, – nor see who’d get to the corner first, – nor stand on your head an’ wave ’em —

“No, sirree!” ejaculated Jolly, with unction, “nothin’.”

“Would ever make up, you mean?” Morry sighed. He had known all the time, of course what the answer would be.

“Yep, – nothin’ could.”

“I thought so. That’s all, – I mean, thank you. Oh yes, there’s one other thing, – I’ve been saving it up. Did you ever hear of a – of a step-mother, Jolly? I just thought I’d ask.”

The result was surprising. The telescoped legs came to view jerkily, but with haste. Jolly stumbled to his feet.

“I better be a-goin’,” he muttered, thinking of empty chip-baskets, empty water-pails, undone errands, – a switch on two nails behind the kitchen door.

“Oh, wait a minute, – did you ever hear of one, Jolly?”

“You bet,” gloomily, “I got one.”

“Oh! – oh, I didn’t know. Then,” rather timidly, “perhaps – I wish you’d tell me what they’re like.”

“Like nothin’! Nobody likes ’em,” came with more gloom yet from the boy with legs.

“Oh!” It was almost a cry from the boy without. This was terrible. This was a great deal terribler than he had expected.

“Would one be angry if – if your legs wouldn’t go? Would it make her very, do you think?”

Still thinking of empty things that ought to have been filled, Jolly nodded emphatically.

“Oh!” The terror grew.

“Then one – then she – wouldn’t be – be glad to see anybody, I suppose, whose legs had never been? – wouldn’t want to shake hands or anything, I suppose? – nor be in the same room?”

“Nope.” One’s legs may be kind even to the verge of agony, but how unkind one’s tongue may be! Jolly’s mind was busy with his own anticipated woes; he did not know he was unkind.

“That’s all, – thank you, I mean,” came wearily, hopelessly, from the pillows. But Morry called the other back before he got over the threshold. There was another thing upon which he craved enlightenment. It might possibly help out.

“Are they pretty, Jolly?” he asked, wistfully.

“Are who what?” repeated the boy on the threshold, puzzled. Guilt and apprehension dull one’s wits.

“Step-ones, – mothers.”

Pretty? When they were lean and sharp and shabby! When they kept switches on two nails behind the door, – when they wore ugly clothes pinned together! But Jolly’s eye caught the wistfulness on Morry’s little, peaked, white face, and a lie was born within him at the sight. In a flash he understood things. Pity came to the front and braced itself stalwartly.

“You bet they’re pretty!” Jolly exclaimed, with splendid enthusiasm. “Prettier’n anythin’! You’d oughter see mine!” (Recording Angel, make a note of it, when you jot this down, that the little face across the room was intense with wistfulness, and Jolly was looking straight that way. And remember legs.)

When Ellen came in to put Morry to bed she found wet spots on his cushions, but she did not mention them. Ellens can be wise. She only handled the limp little figure rather more gently than usual, and said rather more cheery things, perhaps. Perhaps that was why the small fellow under her hands decided to appeal in his desperation to her. It was possible – things were always possible – that Ellen might know something of – of step-ones. For Morry was battling with the pitifully unsatisfactory information Jolly had given him before understanding had conceived the kind little lie. It was, of course, – Morry put it that way because “of course” sometimes comforts you, – of course just possible that Jolly’s step-one might be different. Ellen might know of there being another kind.

So, under the skilful, gentle hands, the boy looked up and chanced it. “Ellen,” he said – “Ellen, are they all that kind, —all of ’em? Jolly’s kind, I mean? I thought poss’bly you might know one” —

“Heart alive!” breathed Ellen, in fear of his sanity. She felt his temples and his wrists and his limp little body. Was he going to be sick now, just as his father and She were coming home? – now, of all times! Which would be better to give him, quinine, or aconite and belladonna?