“We don’t want her, then!” shouted a voice. And all the children shouted: “We don’t want her! we don’t want her!”
“Hush! hush! naughty!” said Daddy Coax, putting up his finger and trying to frown. “Little children are always good. They are little angels.”
“That’s not true. We are not good, and we don’t want to be!” shouted these spoiled children.
Daddy Coax stood looking round upon them with a puzzled, helpless, piteous expression and trembling lips, then he burst into his merry laugh and said to Kitty, “There’s no flattering them.”
Taking out of his pocket his box of sugar-plums, “Look, look!” he went on. “In honor of our guest I shall give you a comfit apiece.”
“Shall we tell her the stories of the pictures round the room?” asked Daddy Coax after the distribution of lollipops, as the children were smacking their lips and staring at Kitty.
“No!” they cried with a sucking sound.
“No! But she has not seen the pictures yet,” gently insisted Daddy Coax. He pointed to one with his softly shaking finger. Kitty thought she had seen that picture before. It was that of a little girl sitting alone under the shadow of a great wood, her hands crossed upon her breast.
“She is so good, she is so innocent—bless her! The picture is called after her the ‘Age of Innocence,’” said Daddy Coax. “All nature seems to love her. She thinks as she goes out that the trees look at her, and the birds come and sing to her in the early morning. The flowers tell her what hour it is and what the weather will be. No animal or insect is afraid of her. As she goes out round her head hovers a little cloud of butterflies. She looks about her and wonders. The flocks of birds passing away over her head to the north pole actually seem to come down as she looks at them. Lovely things with the sunshine upon their backs—”
“That’s a dull story!” cried a boy’s voice.