“Shut the door, Carin dear,” she whispered happily. “Let’s undress him. His mother said we’d find his nightie in that bag.”
CHAPTER VI
SUNDAY
“Once there was a bear,
And he made his pasture there;
And he crept, and he crept, and he crept,
’Till he got away up there!”
“Gurgle—gurgle—gurgle!”
“And once there was a bear—”
This conversation took place between Azalea McBirney and Jonathan Summers one Sunday morning while Jonathan’s mother was at church. Azalea had been to Sunday-school, and had run over to ask her “Cousin” Barbara if she wouldn’t like to attend service to hear her husband preach. Barbara would—Oh, most undeniably she would. It was her firm conviction that if all men could hear her husband, and would give heed to what he said, they would be able to resist all temptations and would live in peace with the world. So she kissed Azalea and permitted her to button her into her pretty golden-brown frock, and then, clapping her large hat over her wayward hair and putting on her gloves as she hastened down the street, she was off, her heart beating high with loving pride of the man whose life was united with her own, and who had already found warm friends in his new parish.
Jonathan had been asleep when his mother left him, but it was not long before he opened his eyes and looked about him to see whom he could get to serve him. For Jonathan was, in his own opinion, the Prince of the World, and everyone in it was to do his bidding. He preferred, of course, his chief slave—the one called “Mamma”—and not seeing her, he opened his mouth and let out a more or less cheerful roar, not so much showing rage, as a healthful imitation of it.
Azalea was delighted. She picked him up, fed him his bottle, arranged him among the sofa pillows, and then, taking a dimpled hand in her own, she pointed delicately to the rosy palm.
“Once there was a bear,
And he made his pasture there.”
It must have been a particularly small bear to have pastured in such a tiny pink palm, but Jonathan saw nothing inconsistent in it, and remarked enthusiastically:
The bear began creeping slyly up Jonathan’s arm. It snuggled for a moment at his elbow, went on—and Jonathan shivered happily—up to his shoulder, and then settled right down in his neck, and seemed to think it a good place to stay. At least, Jonathan laughed delightedly.