"Do as you please for this once," says he, half out of patience, "but remember, I am set against bills and running accounts—pay as you go along, is my motto."
E. E. drew a deep breath, and, putting the money in a little mite of a leather satchel fastened to her side by a belt, took up her parasol and prepared to march off.
Cecilia followed after, surveying her little toadstool of a parasol, and stooping forward as she walked, like an undersized kangaroo.
I only wish E. E., or even Cousin Dempster, could see that child as I see her. But they can't. Where she is concerned, they seem born fools, both of them.
Well, off we went one way, and Dempster the other—he to get the money, and his wife to spend it. I looked on, and wondered how any man living could afford to get married. The whole thing made me down-hearted, and half-ashamed of my relationship with a woman who could worry money out of her husband like that, and not feel how mean she was—could not my cousin see that she was poisoning the soul of her own child by an example which she was just as certain to follow as she was to live.
Well, we got into a carriage and drove up Broadway; but instead of going to Stewart's great marble building, E. E. stopped at some other places, and kept buying and buying till I got tired out, and sat on a round stool by the counter, saying nothing, but thinking a good deal. Each place we left, I heard her say, "Grand Union Hotel, Saratoga: C. O. D.," till I got tired to death of the word.
At one place my cousin and that child had a grand set-to in the store. Cecilia wanted a bright-red silk dress to wear under her lace one; but E. E. liked blue best, and ordered it. Then Cecilia declared she didn't want any dress at all, broke her new parasol striking it against the counter, and ended off by flinging herself down on a stool and drumming her feet against the counter—so mad that she cried till everybody in the store heard her.
Of course E. E. gave in, just to pacify her, while I would have given fifty of the brightest silver dollars ever issued by the U. S. Government, for the happiness of giving her the neatest little trouncing she ever got in her life. But luxuries like these, I can hardly expect just yet. How that cousin of mine can give up a parental prerogative so tempting to the hands I cannot imagine. I really would not put so much pleasure off an hour.