He started quickly up the stairs with her, to carry her back to bed. She clasped her arms around his neck, and laid her soft pink cheek against his. "Oh, daddy dear," I heard her say, "Phil is crying and crying up there in the dark, and the monkey's patting his head, trying to make him stop. He's crying because you don't love him any more. He said you didn't kiss him good night, and you don't care if he runs away, and he hasn't a friend in the world but me and the monkey. He feels awful bad about having to leave home. Oh, daddy dear, please tell him he can stay!"
CHAPTER VII.
WHAT DAGO TOLD THE MIRROR-MONKEY ON SUNDAY.
As soon as Elsie was put back to bed, Doctor Tremont came into the room where I was still trying to comfort Phil, for I had skipped back to him when they started up the stairs. Stirring the fire in the grate until it blazed brightly, he turned to look at Phil. There was a long silence; then he said, "Phil, come here, my boy. Come and sit on my knee by the fire. I want to talk to you awhile."
His voice was so kind and gentle that it seemed to me nobody could have been afraid of him then, but Phil climbed out of bed very slowly, as if he did not want to obey. Wrapping him in a warm, fleecy blanket, the doctor drew him over to a big rocking-chair in front of the fire, and sat down with him on his knee. I crawled back to my cushion on the hearth.
For a little while there was nothing said. The old chair crooned a comforting lullaby of creakity-creak, creakity-creak, as the doctor rocked back and forth, with the boy's curly head on his shoulder. At last he said: "You think that I am unkind, Phil, because I want to send your pet away, and cruel because I punished you for speaking rudely to your Aunt Patricia. Now, I am going to tell you her story, and maybe you will understand her better. The truth is, you do not understand your Aunt Patricia, or why many of the little things you do should annoy her. I want you to put yourself in her place as near as you can, and see how differently you will look at things from her standpoint.
"She was the only child in a houseful of grown people, and growing up among prim elderly persons made her orderly and exact in everything she did. When she was a very little girl she was sent to a strict, old-fashioned school every morning, where she learned to work samplers as well as to read and spell. They used to tell that, at the age of seven, she came home one day with two prizes which she had taken. One was for scholarship, and one was for neatness in her needlework. When she brought them home, her grandmother (that is your great-great-grandmother, you know) praised her for the first; but her grandfather (the one whose portrait Stuart shot) said: 'Nay, it is for the neatness that the little lass should be most commended, for it is ever a pleasing virtue in a woman.' Then he gave her a gold dollar, to encourage her in always being neat and exact. She was so proud of it that nothing could have persuaded her to spend it. She had a hole bored in it so that she could hang it on a ribbon around her neck. For a long, long time she wore it that way. She has often said to me that the sight of it was a daily reminder of what her grandfather wanted her to be, and that it helped her to form those habits of orderliness and neatness in which her family took such pride. Long after she stopped wearing the little coin, the sight of it used to recall the old proverbs that she heard so often, such as '"A stitch in time saves nine," Patricia,' or, 'Remember, my dear, "have a place for everything, and everything in its place."' It used to remind her of the praise they gave her, too. Her grandfather's 'Well done, my good little lass,' was a reward that made her happy for hours.