An odd-looking creature, one would say, if Samuel should suddenly appear in our modern circle. Yet his oddity was rather in what had been done to him than in what he was. His yellow hair was arranged in seven tight spirals hanging to his shoulders; an eighth spiral made a sort of shining ridgepole on the roof of his head, from the brow backwards. Beyond question, a pretty child, with the delicately brilliant coloring of the Nordic; and his fine strong hands and feet had a definite character of their own. He wore a low-necked, short-sleeved tunic, very voluminous as to its skirt; it was made of thick blue woollen material woven by his grandmother. Beneath the tunic were ridiculous shapeless breeches of the same stuff; then came a section of bare calf, and after that, white wool socks and stout, copper-toed ankle-ties. As he sat on the braided rug, among his blue homespun billows, his back against his adoring slave, the sheep-dog Ajax, and his heart and soul bound up in his job of carving, he was at once the most absurd and lovable object in all Vermont. Disquieting, too, perhaps, for his next of kin.
Seven o’clock was to be his bed-knell; and now seven o’clock suddenly sounded from the tall shape in the corner. At once the mother rose, smoothed her ample skirt, and held out her hand. “Bedtime, Samuel.”
Samuel looked at her beseechingly, but he knew that his look was lost. Already in his short life he had learned that in the realm of prohibitions, woman is of sterner stuff than man. He therefore gazed toward the spot where help was more likely to be found. Still seated firmly, clutching his cat in one hand and his new knife in the other, he stretched out his arms to his father, and cried aloud, “None done, papa!” Invincible argument from creator to creator, “None done!”
The parents exchanged irresolute glances. “Very well, Samuel, just ten minutes more.” Samuel, victorious, returned to his art. But what are minutes to him whom the dream has possessed? At the end of ten minutes, when the mother rose again, and delicately flicked her cashmere folds, Samuel was far more unready than before. And now, his clear infantine voice with its uncannily correct enunciation had lost its former coaxing grace. The tone was haughty, argumentative. “None done, papa!”
“It’s his birthday, caro mio.” The young mother spoke softly, hesitating; the father, in secret delight, relinquished responsibility. “May as well make it half-past seven,” he growled. “Perhaps he’ll be tired out by then.” But when he said that, he must have forgotten his own elation in carving his violins of an evening. By day he worked on patterns for huge machinery, shaping them with deft mechanical skill. But every night, between nine and eleven, when the evening reading was over and the little house under the pines was very still, he used to bring out one of his violins, and carve and caress and polish its exquisite surfaces. The patterns for machines were his livelihood, but the violins were his love. How could he have forgotten his own raptures of carving! Ah, no, Samuel was by no means “tired out by then!”
When the half-hour sounded, the husband stood up, beckoning to the wife to remain seated. No more woman’s foolishness; the boy must to bed. “Come on, young man! Time’s up!” Yet his voice did not sound so commanding as he had hoped. Samuel felt its indecision; and indeed he was at the moment too high in the clouds of carving to give any attention whatsoever to things beneath. “None done, papa!” The voice was no longer coaxing; it was not even argumentative; it was hostile, truculent to a degree. And when his father approached him, to make an end, the boy looked wildly around as if praying to the gods to take his work of art under their protection. But no gods intervened, and Samuel, at bay before his universe, seized his carving in all its cathood, hid it among his back breadths, and sat down strongly upon it, glaring defiance at his progenitors. “None done!”
The mother rose quickly, Nancy trampling on Annunziata. Her face was pale. “This is disobedience,” she said in a shaken voice, “and it must have its punishment. It is the third time, within three months, that he has needed punishment. The first time was the eggs. The second time it was the spectacles. And now, it is—insubordination.” Her heart contracted with suffering. Insubordination! A large word to use on so small a being!
Ah, yes, the eggs, and the spectacles! The young father remembered the eggs and the spectacles; and even in the midst of a misery scarcely less acute than the mother’s, a smile twitched his lips. The eggs!