Mr. Bingle

by George Barr McCutcheon

But after he told her, he cried.... Still, they were not to take her away until the end of the week, and that was five days off.

An unsuspected astuteness in the character of Thomas Singleton Bingle reveals itself in the declaration, now to be made for the first time in this present history of the man: he never allowed his wards to look upon themselves as his own children. They were taught to call him daddy and to look upon him as a substitute supplied by God to take the place of a real father, and by the same token Mrs. Bingle became mother to the brood, but they were safe-guarded against the surprise and shock of future revelations—revelations that so frequently spoil the lives of those who have lived in happy ignorance. Mr. Bingle, gentle soul that he was, had the heart to look ahead in this pleasant game of his. He saw the cruelty of a too loving deception. He foresaw the desolating results of a too great faith in chance. So his children were taught to regard him in the light of a protector who was satisfied to have them feel that he was under obligations to them instead of the other way round. It was his joy to be called daddy, and in return for this simple tribute he lavished upon them all the love and tenderness of a true father and a great deal of the consideration that a child deserves, but seldom gets, from its own pre-occupied and self-satisfied parent.

Kathleen knew that she was not the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Bingle. She had always known that she was the daughter of a Mr. and Mrs. Hinman, both deceased. In the case of Reginald—and, in a way, Harold also—there was some uncertainty. As the former advanced in years and characteristics, it became more and more apparent to Mr. Bingle that his fifth-born was not of Italian descent, despite the fact that the authorities at the Foundlings' Home had him down on the records as the offspring of a Mr. and Mrs. Vanesi, lost in one of the factory fires in the city of Brooklyn. Mr. Bingle was convinced, as time went on, that the tags on certain infants had been accidentally misplaced by careless attendants, and that Reginald's nick-name, bestowed by Frederick and Wilberforce in their frivolous wisdom, was not so far out of the way as it might have seemed if he had not been possessed of his own vague misgivings. They called him Abey. As for Harold, he was unmistakably Irish, although the hospital people declared that he was German to the core when Mr. and Mrs. Bingle went there to pick out a healthy Teuton to add to their collection. They were positive that they wanted a German baby; nothing else would do, they announced clearly and positively to the superintendent in charge of the maternity ward. The superintendent was most gracious about it. She said they could return little Fritz if he didn't come up to the mark in every particular. What more could a German fancier desire than a child whose name alone stood for all that one could possibly seek in Teutonic research? Fritz Bumbleburg:—that was the infant's name and his father's name before him. Surely Mr. Bingle wouldn't demand anything more German than that. Moreover, Fritz's mother was German-American and she had been the wife of Fritz's father for a matter of five years or more. Still, in spite of all this, Fritz (re-christened Harold while he was still too young to raise a voice in protest) was unmistakably Irish, or at least part Irish. It is also worthy of note that Mrs. Bumbleburg ran away with an Irish policeman some weeks after the infant Fritz's advent into the world, which would go to show that the mother, at any rate, had Celtic inclinations if nothing more.

Kathleen took it very hard at first. She was inconsolable until the desperate Bingle began to dilate upon the wonders of Florida. Miss Fairweather was called in to corroborate all that they had to say about the gorgeousness of that southern fairyland, and as a group they did very well when one stops to consider that not one of them had ever been south of Washington, D. C. The child cheered up a bit. She began to take some interest in the matter of dress. Following that, she revealed considerable enthusiasm over the prospect of going south in a private car with a personal maid of her own, and could have a change of frock twice a day for a week at a stretch, to say nothing of being allowed to eat in the public dining-car if it pleased her to do so. That thing of eating in the dining-car was a master-stroke on the part of Bingle. It was the greatest inducement he could have offered to the child in support of the claim that she ought to be the happiest creature on earth, going away with Mr. and Mrs. Force like this.

Frederick and Wilberforce openly declared—in the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Bingle—that you bet they'd go in a minute if they had the chance to see the land where Melissa's pirates and smugglers did most of their plundering—an attitude that created an unhappy half-hour for Melissa later on in the day. Any one else but Melissa would have received her walking-papers.

The frocks, the personal maid, the prospect of the dining-car and the assurance that it wouldn't be necessary to call Mr. Force "daddy" until she became a little more accustomed to seeing him around, brought Kathleen to a proper way of thinking. She became quite eager to go!

"Well," said Mr. Bingle to his wife, after the storm, "I fancy we'd better make an appointment with Rouquin as soon as possible. I am really quite enthusiastic, my dear, over that idea of yours to have a cute little French baby. The sooner we get it the better, I say. It is going to be pretty lonesome for awhile. Somehow I hope we find one that cries a good deal. It would cheer us up considerably, I'm sure, if we had something like that to annoy us, especially at night. We shall probably lie awake anyhow."

Frederick was causing them no little anxiety. The boy wasn't eating well. He was beginning to look a bit peaked. Dr. Fiddler was puzzled. He could not discover anything wrong, and yet could not account for the listlessness that had come over the lad during the past few weeks.

As a matter of fact, Frederick was in love—quite desperately in love. The object of his adoration was the beautiful Miss Fairweather. No doctor in the world could have properly diagnosed the youngster's case, for the simple reason that Frederick's disease was a perfectly healthy one, and when you confront a doctor with anything in the nature of health you stump him completely. He doesn't know what to do about it. Nevertheless, Dr. Fiddler—being a great man and entirely ignorant of Frederick's complaint—gave him castor oil.

Now this same Dr. Fiddler undoubtedly had been in love at the tender age of twelve. What man is there to-day who was not desperately afflicted at that age, and who is there among us that has forgotten the experience? Who is there among us, past the age of thirty, who cannot tell without an instant's hesitation, the name of the mature young lady who first assailed his susceptibilities? Who can honestly say that he doesn't remember the school-teacher, or the choir-singer who taught the Sunday-school class, or the lady who came to visit mother and went away engaged to a friend of father's, or the nurse who queened it over the house when mother was ill and who devoted entirely too much time to the new baby? There is always one full-grown, lamentably old young lady in the life of every boy, and her name is imperishable. It is invariably MISS Somebody-or-other. No man can recall the Christian name of his first love for the very good reason that he never knew it. The universal lady is always MISS So-and-so. Even the most ardent of twelve-year-olds never forgets that his heart's desire is a lady whose years demand the most respectful consideration. Dr. Fiddler, having loved and lost, should have appreciated the tender passion that took away Frederick's appetite and made of him a melancholy sufferer. What Frederick needed was the moral support of a physician who would recommend and supply a quick and deadly poison with which Mr. Richard Flanders could be permanently squashed.