Everyone looked, looked high and low, looked until we got to the place, where we stood and looked stupidly at one another, and then there came, in a strained whisper, from Marie: “What’s that?”
She pointed at a dripping bundle sticking in the broken window-pane. Mrs. Tyler screamed outright! Those cross-eyes looking at her from between those stubby feet. There was a wild abandon in the attitude that shocked her! But her scream was as nothing compared to the succession of shrieks that broke from the throat of “Tyler’s pretty little devil”! “Who? a—a—ah! Who? a—a—ah! Who? a—a—ah!” she screamed after each “Who?”
At last she finished, “Who put my ‘peshous Dinah’ in that hole? She shall be killed, all dead! and put in a hole, her own-self! She shall!! She shall!!!” She caught up a glass from the table and dashed it on the floor, breaking it in pieces. “Hurry! or I’ll break everything, I will!!” And when Dinah was pulled out and straightened, words of mine fail to describe her appearance!
Marie held loving little arms out to receive the dripping stop-gap, saying: “We’ll go to bed, right now, my ‘peshous Dinah’! Never mind your nighty, you’ll get cold! Come, and we’ll cuddle up, until you are all dry again!” And then the storm broke! It was simply impossible that Marie should be allowed to go to bed with that dripping bundle pressed in her arms, and it was equally impossible to make her obey or listen to reason. It was a wretched scene. The mother knelt to the child she had ruined, calling her, “her angel, her star, her flower,” and Marie gave her a kick or a push at each word, and swore oaths that a mule-driver would hesitate before ejecting in a row. Where had she learned them? Who knows? Who ever knows how a beloved child learns evil? But on and on went this battle, until at last, worn out with the past fright and the present rage, the little vixen fainted.
Mrs. Tyler sent for the doctor, and while waiting his coming, and after Marie’s recovery of consciousness, she said to me: “Carrie, can’t you think of some way to keep that awful doll away from my darling to-night? Try, child, try!”
I thought hard enough to turn my hair gray, it seemed to me, before I was gladdened by an idea. I went to the door and beckoned Mrs. Tyler, and asked her, in a whisper, two or three questions about an article she had been reading aloud when the storm arose—an article about the water-cure, then the very newest fad. She gave me the desired information, and thus armed, I stole to Marie’s side, and with great seeming secrecy, told her I had a lovely new play, if only her mother would allow us (poor Mrs. Tyler!) to play it.
Rather languidly, she answered: “To-morrow, Cawie!”
But I said: “To-morrow would be too late, because Dinah had to be awful wet to play this game.”
At once she was all eagerness, and commanded me to explain. And so it came about, that the “peshous un” was stripped under loving eyes and rolled in a wet dinner-napkin, and then “packed” in wet sheets, all according to “Hoyle,” or the water-cure doctors. And I engaged to give her several drinks of water during the night, and assured Marie that she would find her “peshous Dinah” all right in the morning, and Marie laughed and talked, while I did the packing. And the doctor found her with a high pulse and red cheeks, but the wet doll was not in her arms. She refused to show her tongue, because she said the last time she put out her tongue at him, he was mad about it, which was very true.
He gave her a powder, she went to sleep, and the rest of us humbly thanked our Creator.