"She just pointed her finger at the bear, and she said in a loud, harsh voice: 'Shame! Shame! Shame on you! For sha-a-ame!' She'd taught district school, you know, and had had lots of practice saying that to children who had been bad. The bear looked up at her hard for a minute, then dropped his head and began to walk slowly away. Grandmother always said, 'The great lummox lumbered off into the bushes like a gawk of a boy who's been caught in mischief,' She waited just a minute and then ran like lightning along the path through the woods to the neighbors and got the medicine."
The story was evidently over, the last tomato was peeled. Mrs. Marshall rose, wiping her stained and dripping hands on her apron, and went to the stove. Arnold started as if coming out of a dream and looked about him with wondering eyes. "Well, what-d'you-think-o'-that?" he commented, all in one breath. "Say, Mother," he went on, looking up at her with trusting eyes, searching the quiet face, "what do you suppose made the bear go away? You wouldn't think a little thing like that would scare a bear!"
Mrs. Marshall began dipping the hot, stewed tomatoes into the glass jars ready in a big pan of boiling water on the back of the stove. The steam rose up, like a cloud, into her face, which began to turn red and to glisten with perspiration. "Oh, I don't suppose it really frightened the bear," she said moderately, refraining from the dramatic note of completeness which her husband, in spite of himself, gave to everything he touched, and adding instead the pungent, homely savor of reality, which none relished more than Sylvia and her father, incapable themselves of achieving it. "'Most likely the bear would have gone away of his own accord anyhow. They don't attack people unless they're stirred up." Arnold bit deeply into the solidity of this unexaggerated presentation, and was silent for a moment, saying then: "Well, anyhow, she didn't know he'd go away! She was a sport, all right!"
"Oh yes, indeed," said Mrs. Marshall, dipping and steaming, and wiping away the perspiration, which ran down in drops to the end of her large, shapely nose. "Yes, my grandmother was a sport, all right." The acrid smell of hot, cooking tomatoes filled the shed and spread to the edge where Sylvia and her aunt stood, still a little aloof. Although it bore no resemblance to the odor of violets, it could not be called a disgusting smell: it was the sort of smell which is quite agreeable when one is very hungry. But Sylvia was not hungry at all. She stepped back involuntarily. Mrs. Marshall-Smith, on the contrary, advanced a step or so, until she stood close to her sister-in-law. "Barbara, I'd like to see you a few minutes without the children," she remarked in the neutral tone she always had for her brother's wife. "A rather unpleasant occurrence—I'm in something of a quandary."
Mrs. Marshall nodded. "All right," she agreed. "Scatter out of here, you children! Go and let out the hens, and give them some water!"
Arnold needed no second bidding, reminded by his stepmother's words of his experiences of the morning. He and Judith scampered away in a suddenly improvised race to see who would reach the chicken-house first. Sylvia went more slowly, looking back once or twice at the picture made by the two women, so dramatically contrasted—her mother, active, very upright, wrapped in a crumpled and stained apron, her dark hair bound closely about her round head, her moist, red face and steady eyes turned attentively upon the radiant creature beside her, cool and detached, leaning willow-like on the slender wand of the gold-colored parasol.
Professor Marshall chanced to be late that day in coming home for luncheon, and Aunt Victoria and Arnold had returned to the hotel without seeing him. His wife remarked that Victoria had asked her to tell him something, but, acting on her inviolable principle that nothing must interfere with the cheerful peace of mealtime, said nothing more to him until after they had finished the big plate of purple grapes from her garden, with which the meal ended.
Then Judith vanished out to the shop, where she was constructing a rabbit-house for the latest family. Sylvia took Lawrence, yawning and rubbing his eyes, but fighting desperately against his sleepiness, upstairs for his nap. When this task fell to Judith's lot it was despatched with business-like promptness, but Lawrence had early discovered a temperamental difference between his two sisters, and Sylvia was seldom allowed to leave the small bed until she had paid tribute to her ever-present desire to please, in the shape of a story or a song. On that day Buddy was more exacting than usual. Sylvia told the story of Cinderella and sang, "A Frog He Would a-Wooing Go," twice through, before the little boy's eyes began to droop. Even then, the clutch of his warm, moist fingers about her hand did not relax. When she tried to slip her fingers out of his, his eyelids fluttered open and he tightened his grasp with a wilful frown. So she sat still on the edge of his bed, waiting till he should be really asleep.
From the dining-room below her rose the sound of voices, or rather of one voice—her father's. She wondered why it sounded so angry, and then, mixed with some unintelligible phrases—"turned out on the street, in trouble—in a foreign land—Good God!" she caught Pauline's name. Oh yes, that must be the trouble. Mother was telling Father about Pauline—whatever it was she had done—and he was as mad about it as Aunt Victoria had been. If Aunt Victoria's voice had sounded like that, she didn't wonder that Arnold had hidden under the bed. If she could have moved, she, too, would have run away, although the idea that she ought to do so did not occur to her. There had been no secrets in that house. The talk had always been for all to hear who would.
But when she tried again to slip her hand away from Buddy's the little
boy pulled at it hard, and half opening his eyes, said sleepily,
"Sylvie stay with Buddy—Sylvie stay—" Sylvia yielded weakly, said:
"Yes—sh! sh! Sister'll stay. Go to sleep, Buddy."