She looked about her somewhat uncertainly as if in search of a suitable yet entirely safe idea. "I think," she said solemnly, "that I shall tie you to the arm of this big chair for—ten minutes!"
The corners of Richard's pink mouth suddenly drooped as this terrible sentence of the maternal court was pronounced.
"I am a dood boy, mudzer," he quavered. "I bumped my head on ze floor an' I cwied!"
Two dimpled arms were thrown about Elizabeth's neck and a curly head burrowed passionately into her bosom. "I love 'oo, mudzer; I am a dood boy!"
"I know you mean to be good, darling!" exclaimed Elizabeth, her heart melting within her; "but you do forget so often. Mother wants to help you to remember."
But the intelligent infant had given himself up to an unpremeditated luxury of grief, and Elizabeth found herself in the unexpected position of a suppliant consoler. She begged her child to stop crying; she kissed the black and blue spot on his forehead and soothed him with soft murmurs and gentle caresses, and when finally he had sobbed himself to sleep in her arms, she bestowed the moist rosy little bundle on the couch, covering him warmly; then, with a parting pat and cuddle, sat down to her belated work on the spare-room curtains, feeling that she had been very severe indeed with her youngest child.
Richard was still rosily asleep and Elizabeth was hurriedly attaching the ruffles to one of the improvised curtains when Celia, with two buttons off her frock in the back and a broad streak of stove-blacking across her honest red face, announced "one nize lady."
Elizabeth sprang to her feet in sudden consternation at sight of the small square of white pasteboard with which Celia prefaced her announcement.
Mrs. J. Mortimer Van Duser was a distant relative of Samuel Brewster's, and it pleased her to be kind, in an imposing and majestic manner—entirely suited to her own imposing and majestic person—to his "little family," as she invariably termed it. Elizabeth had assured her husband on more than one occasion that she did not feel the least embarrassment in that august presence; but her heart still flew to her mouth at sight of the entirely correct equipage from Beacon Street, and she always found herself drawing a long breath of unconfessed relief when it rolled away after one of Mrs. Van Duser's infrequent visits.
When presently Mrs. Van Duser, large, bland and encased in broadcloth and sables, entered, she bestowed a gracious kiss upon Elizabeth's cheek, and seated herself in a straight-backed chair with the effect of a magistrate about to administer justice.