At the precise moment that the door closed behind Albertina, the clock in Peter Stuyvesant’s apartment in New York struck seven and Eleanor, in a fresh white dress and blue ribbons, slipped into her chair at the dinner table and waited with eyes blazing with excitement for Peter to make the momentous discovery of the gift at his plate.
CHAPTER XI
Gertrude Has Trouble with Her Behavior
“Dear Uncle Peter,” Eleanor wrote from Colhassett when she had been established there under the new régime for a week or more. “I slapped Albertina’s face. I am very awfully sorry, but I could not help it. Don’t tell Aunt Margaret because it is so contrary to her teachings and also the golden rule, but she was more contrary to the golden rule that I was. I mean Albertina. What do you think she said? She said Aunt Gertrude was homely and an old maid, and the hired girl was homely too. Well, I think she is, but I am not going to have Albertina think so. Aunt Gertrude is pretty with those big eyes and ink like hair and lovely teeth and one dimple. Albertina likes hair fuzzed all over faces and blonds. Then she said she guessed I wasn’t your favorite, and that the gold spoons were most likely tin gilded over. I don’t know what you think about slapping. Will you please write and say what you think? You know I am anxsuch to do well. But 125 I think I know as much as Albertina about some things. She uster treat me like a dog, but it is most a year now since I saw her before.
“Well, here we are, Aunt Gertrude and me, too. Grandpa did not like her at first. She looked so much like summer folks, and acted that way, too. He does not agree with summer folks, but she got him talking about foreign parts and that Spanish girl that made eyes at him, and nearly got him away from Grandma, and the time they were wrecked going around the horn, and showing her dishes and carvings from China. Now he likes her first rate. She laughs all the time. Grandma likes her too, but not when Grandpa tells her about that girl in Spain.
“We eat in the dining-room, and have lovely food, only Grandpa does not like it, but we have him a pie now for breakfast,—his own pie that he can eat from all the time and he feels better. Aunt Gertrude is happy seeing him eat it for breakfast and claps her hands when he does it, only he doesn’t see her.
“She is teaching me more manners, and to swim, and some French. It is vacation and I don’t have 126 regular lessons, the way I did while we were on Long Island.
“Didn’t we have a good time in that hotel? Do you remember the night I stayed up till ten o’clock and we sat on the beach and talked? I do. I love you very much. I think it is nice to love anybody. Only I miss you. I would miss you more if I believed what Albertina said about my not being your favorite. I am.