“My daughter, oh! my daughter,” he cried. “This suspense is killing me. For the love of Mike, children, where is she?”
“She’s coming,” Beulah answered; “David’s bringing her.”
Gertrude pushed him into the chaise-lounge 23 already in the possession of Margaret, and squeezed in between them.
“Hold my hand, Jimmie,” she said. “The feelings of a father are nothing,—nothing in comparison to those which smolder in the maternal breast. Look at Beulah, how white she is, and Margaret is trembling this minute.”
“I’m trembling, too,” Peter said, “or if I’m not trembling, I’m frightened.”
“We’re all frightened,” Margaret said, “but we’re game.”
The door-bell rang again.
“There they come,” Beulah said, “oh! everybody be good to me.”
The familiar figure of their good friend David appeared on the threshold at this instant, and beside him an odd-looking little figure in a shoddy cloth coat, and a faded blue tam-o’-shanter. There was a long smudge of dirt reaching from the corner of her eye well down into the middle of her cheek. A kind of composite gasp went up from the waiting group, a gasp of surprise, consternation, and panic. Not one of the five could have told at that instant what it was he expected to see, or how his imagination 24 of the child differed from the concrete reality, but amazement and keen disappointment constrained them. Here was no figure of romance and delight. No miniature Galatea half hewn out of the block of humanity, waiting for the chisel of a composite Pygmalion. Here was only a grubby, little unkempt child, like all other children, but not so presentable.
“What’s the matter with everybody?” said David with unnatural sharpness. “I want to present you to our ward, Miss Eleanor Hamlin, who has come a long way for the pleasure of meeting you. Eleanor, these are your cooperative parents.”