Peter Elucidates
It was Peter who got at the heart of the trouble. Margaret tried, but though Eleanor clung to her and relaxed under the balm of her gentle caresses, the child remained entirely inarticulate until Peter gathered her up in his arms, and signed to the others that he wished to be left alone with her.
By the time he rejoined the two in the drawing-room—he had missed his after-dinner coffee in the long half-hour that he had spent shut into the guest room with the child—Jimmie and Gertrude had arrived, and the four sat grouped together to await his pronouncement.
“She thinks she has adenoids. She wants the doll that David left in that carpetbag of hers he forgot to take out of the ‘Handsome cab.’ She wants to be loved, and she wants to grow up and write poetry for the newspapers,” he announced. “Also she will eat a piece of bread and butter and a glass of milk, as soon as it can conveniently be provided for her.” 41
“When did you take holy orders, Gram?” Jimmie inquired. “How do you work the confessional? I wish I could make anybody give anything up to me, but I can’t. Did you just go into that darkened chamber and say to the kid, ‘Child of my adoption,—cough,’ and she coughed, or are you the master of some subtler system of choking the truth out of ’em?”
“Anybody would tell anything to Peter if he happened to want to know it,” Margaret said seriously. “Wouldn’t they, Beulah?”
Beulah nodded. “She wants to be loved,” Peter had said. It was so simple for some people to open their hearts and give out love,—easily, lightly. She was not made like that,—loving came hard with her, but when once she had given herself, it was done. Peter didn’t know how hard she had tried to do right with the child that day.
“The doll is called the rabbit doll, though there is no reason why it should be, as it only looks the least tiny bit like a rabbit, and is a girl. Its other name is Gwendolyn, and it always goes to bed with her. Mrs. O’Farrels aunt said that children always stopped playing with dolls when they got to be as big as Eleanor, but she isn’t never 42 going to stop.—You must get after that double negative, Beulah.—She once wrote a poem beginning: ‘The rabbit doll, it is my own.’ She thinks that she has a frog-like expression of face, and that is why Beulah doesn’t like her better. She is perfectly willing to have her adenoids cut out, if Beulah thinks it would improve her, but she doesn’t want to ‘take anything,’ when she has it done.”
“You are a wonder, Gram,” Gertrude said admiringly.
“Oh! I have made a mess of it, haven’t I?” Beulah said. “Is she homesick?”