Teddy: Her Book / A Story of Sweet Sixteen

by Anna Chapin Ray

Then the change had come, and a cloud had fallen on the home. Baby Allyn had been born, and on the same day the bright, happy young mother, boon companion of her children in work and in play, had fallen asleep. The shock had come so suddenly and unexpectedly that there had been no time to plan for a reconstruction. Almost before they realized what had occurred, they had settled back into their former routine, only with Hope as the nominal, and old Susan, the American "help," as the actual, head of things. In a larger community, such an arrangement would have been out of the question; but Hope was a womanly child, and Susan had been in the family for years, in a relation which unfortunately is fast dying out. Accordingly, the doctor had been content to let the situation go on from day to day, until the hour of his second marriage, two or three years later.

Back in a far corner of the grounds, close to the division fence towards the garden of the long-unoccupied corner house, was an early apple-tree, old and gnarly, which for years had been known as "Teddy's tree." No one had ever been able to trace the beginning of her proprietorship in it; but she had assumed it as her own and viewed with disfavor any encroachments on the part of the others. It might have been a case of squatter sovereignty; but it was a sovereignty which Theodora stoutly maintained. Her scarlet hammock hung from the lower branches, and the tree was full of comfortable crooks and crotches which she knew to the least detail. Thither she was wont to retire to recover her lost temper, to grieve over her girlish sorrows, to dream dreams of future glory, and, often and often, to lie passive and watch the white clouds drift this way and that in the great blue arch above her. No human being, not even Hubert himself, could have told so much of Theodora's inner life as this old apple-tree, if only the power of speech had been granted it.

Three days later, Theodora was curled up in a fork of one of the topmost branches of her tree. The apples were beginning to ripen, and she had eaten until even her hearty young appetite was satisfied. Then she crossed her feet, coiled one arm around the branch beside her, and fell to planning, as she had so often done before, how she could fulfil her two great ambitions, to go to college in the first place, and then to become a famous author. It was always an absorbing subject and, losing herself in it, she became totally oblivious of her surroundings. Nearly an hour later, she was roused by the sound of approaching voices, and she straightened herself and peered down through the branches.

Just below her, on the other side of the fence, so close to it that it had escaped her notice, was a light bamboo lounge, covered with a pile of bright cushions. Across the garden, evidently towards it, came a wheeled chair pushed by a sedate-looking person in green livery, and occupied by a slight figure covered with a gay rug. Theodora gave a little gasp of sheer delight.

"It's the boy!" she exclaimed to herself. "Now is my chance to get a look at him."

Beside the lounge, the chair came to a halt, and the man, bending down, lifted the boy from the chair. With pitiful eyes, Theodora noted the limp helplessness of all the lower part of his body; but she also saw that the boyish face was bright and manly, and that his blue eyes flashed with a spirit equal to Hubert's own. She watched approvingly the handy way in which the man settled the cushions. Then he turned to go away. Half way across the garden, he was arrested by a call from the lounge.

"Hi, Patrick!"

"Well, sir?"

"Where's my book?"

"What book?"