THROUGH THE BENDING SHRUBBERY
Sometimes she was overheard conversing with the terrier,—long, confidential talks, with which no third person intermeddled.
"Dearness! Daintiness! Loveliness! Did you have a little baxet with blankets while you were away? Preciousness! Did they cut you meat and warm you soup for you, and comfort you? Did they ever let you out to shi-shiver in 'e wet and cold? Tell me, Dearest-in-'e-World! Tell me, Love-li-ness! Tell me all about it. Tell me about 'e barber who shaved you hair so close,—was he kind to you?"
When Commencement was over, and the town quiet and a little dull, something of a festive nature was thought good for Adah; and the doctor, who came only as a matter of occasional ceremony now, to see his patient running away from him, proposed a party; for he was not an imaginative man, and could only suggest the conventional.
"Something to take her mind off the dog for a little," he said. "We must avoid anything resembling a fixed idea."
"Love is always a fixed idea," replied the professor of psychology, smiling. "But you may try, doctor."
"I will arx Loveliness," said the child quietly. She ran away with the Yorkshire, and they sat among the reddening weigelia bushes for some time, conversing in low tones. Then they trotted back, laughing and barking.
"Yes, Papa, we'll have a party. But it must be a Loveliness party, Mamma. And we've decided who to arx, and all about it. If you would like to know, I'll whisper you, for it's a secret to Loveliness and me, until we think it over."
Merrily she whispered in her mother's bending ear a list of chosen guests. It ran on this wise:—
The family.