Those Brewster Children

by Florence Morse Kingsley

"You must eat your breakfast and go to school," Elizabeth said, trying hard to keep her rising impatience out of her voice. "And after school——"

"After school can I take my bank? The very minute it's out? Can I, mother; can I?"

"You should say may I; not can I, Doris. Yes; if you're a good girl in kindergarten, and keep hold of Carroll's hand all the way going and coming, why then——"

"I don't like to take hold of hands with Carroll," objected Doris, drawing her lips into a scarlet bud. "I like to walk by my lone; but I promise I won't get run over or anything. I'll be just as good!"

It wasn't far to the little school where both children spent the morning. Elizabeth watched her darlings quite to the corner, pleased to observe that they were clinging obediently to each other's hands and apparently engaged in amicable conversation.

Then her thoughts turned with some anxiety upon the approaching visit of Miss Tripp. She was very fond of Evelyn Tripp, she assured herself, and if it were not for Celia, and the spare-room (which needed new curtains, new paper and a larger rug to cover the worn place in the carpet), and if—she wrinkled her pretty forehead unbecomingly—the children could only be depended upon. One could not safely predict the conduct of Doris from hour to hour; and while, of course, Carroll was the best child in the world; still, even Carroll—upon occasions—could be very trying to the nerves. As for Richard, he was the baby; and no one, not even Evelyn Tripp, could fail to understand the subordinate position of the average household in its relations to the baby of the house. She kissed and hugged the small tyrant rapturously, while she set forth a plenitude of building-blocks, picture-books, trains, engines and wagons of miniature sizes and brilliant colours calculated to enchain the infant attention.

"Now, darling," she cooed, "here are all your pretty playthings; sit right down and play, and be a good little man, while mother runs out in the kitchen a minute to see what Celia is doing."

Richard surveyed his spread-out possessions with a distinctly bored expression on his round cherubic countenance. He had seen and handled those trains, wagons, engines and blocks many, many times before, and they did not appeal to his infant imagination with the same alluring force as did some other objects in the room. Had his mother seen fit to install the scarlet locomotive, for example, on the lofty mantle-piece with a stern interdiction upon it, it would doubtless have appeared supremely attractive. But the infant mind does not differ in essentials from that of the adult. The difficult, the forbidden, the almost unattainable fires the ambition and stiffens the will. There was a glass tank in the bay-window, situated on what appeared to Richard as a lofty and well-nigh inaccessible table. It contained a large quantity of water of a greenish hue, as well as a number of swift-moving, glittering, golden things which flashed in and out between the green, waving plants rooted in the sand at the bottom.

Now Richard had been sternly forbidden to touch this enticing combination of objects. Nevertheless he had done it; not only once, but twice—thrice. He recalled with rapture the cool, slippery feel of the stones; the entrancing drip and gurgle of the water; the elusive, flitting shapes of the yellow things, "sishes," he called them fondly, which an adroit hand could occasionally manage to seize and hold for a brief instant.

A stray sunbeam darted into the aquarium and lit up its mysterious depths with irresistible gorgeousness. Richard gazed and gazed; then he turned and kicked the red locomotive; under the impact of his pudgy foot it dashed with futile energy into the ruck of wagons, cars and building-blocks and lay there on its side, its feeble little wheels turning slowly.