“She’s quite clever. She writes verses, she models pretty well, Gertrude says. It’s too soon to expect any special aptitude to develop.”
“Well, I’m glad to discover your philanthropic tendencies, David. I never knew you had any before, but this seems to me a very doubtful undertaking. You take a child like this from very plain surroundings and give her a year or two of life among cultivated and well-to-do people, just enough for her to acquire a taste for extravagant living and associations. Then what becomes of her? You get tired of your bargain. Something else comes on the docket. You marry—and then what becomes of your protégée? She goes back to the country, a thoroughly unsatisfied little rustic, quite unfitted to be the wife of the farmer for whom fate intended her.”
“I wish you wouldn’t, mother,” David said, with an uneasy glance at Eleanor’s pale face, set in the stoic lines he remembered so well from the afternoon of his first impression of her. “She’s a sensitive little creature.” 140
“Nonsense. It never hurts anybody to have a plain understanding of his position in the world. I don’t know what foolishness you romantic young people may have filled her head with. It’s just as well she should hear common sense from me and I intend that she shall.”
“I’ve explained to you, mother, that this child is my legal and moral responsibility and will be partly at least under my care until she becomes of age. I want her to be treated as you’d treat a child of mine if I had one. If you don’t, I can’t have her visit us again. I shall take her away with me somewhere. Bringing her home to you this time is only an experiment.”
“She’ll have a much more healthful and normal experience with us than she’s had with any of the rest of your violent young set, I’ll be bound. She’ll probably be useful, too. She can look out for Zaidee—I never say that name without irritation—but it’s the only name the little beast will answer to. Do you like dogs, child?”
Eleanor started at the suddenness of the question, but did not reply to it. Mrs. Bolling waited and David looked at her expectantly. 141
“My mother asked you if you liked dogs, Eleanor; didn’t you understand?”
Eleanor opened her lips as if to speak and then shut them again firmly.
“Your protégée is slightly deaf, David,” his mother assured him.