As with a gentle good night she slipped away, a profound sigh of relief escaped me. That child succeeded in almost wholly blotting out my feeling of bitter perplexity after talking with Gertrude. Do Alicias upon growing older turn into Gertrudes, I wonder? No, I think not. Surely not.
I now look to the return of Pendleton almost with equanimity.
CHAPTER XIII
I am agitated like a hen with a newly hatched brood.
It has suddenly been revealed to me that the complacency with which I have been regarding my care and rearing of the children is abysmally false and wholly unjustified.
They are not properly clothed for New York and even here in Crestlands they seem on a sudden pitifully shabby. The competition in that sort of thing in a suburb is keen. Everybody's children seem better dressed than my own and yet, do what I will, I cannot afford to spend more. Randolph's high-school dignity is positively impaired by clothes which he is constantly outgrowing. And the rate at which Jimmie wears out trousers and soils white suits is simply unbelievable. Laura alone seems to have the gift of always keeping her things fresh and wearing them as though they were new.
As for Alicia, that girl ought to be clothed in purple, at least figuratively, if only I could afford it. It seems to me I cannot live another day unless I procure for Alicia a large collection of frocks and blouses and shoes and whatever else would set off that faunlike creature, compact of energy and grace. For almost daily that child grows more beautiful in a way that pulls at my heartstrings.
I trust I am no idiotic parent, or foster parent, to rave about her eyes and complexion and the like. I am as dispassionate as any one can well be. But truly there is something starlike in her eyes and at times, when she is sewing or reading or working on my eternal catalogue, I surprise her pensive, absorbed in some long thoughts of her own that not for worlds would I disturb. At such moments I am absolutely fascinated by those soft pools of light that irradiate her face.
Are other girls like that at her age, I wonder? It seems scarcely conceivable. At any rate, I have never seen any others like her. But then, I have seen so few.
The truth remains, however, that I positively must dress her better. Even my dull fancy joyously leaps at the vision of Alicia beautifully dressed and diffusing sweetness and fragrance through the house. Of course, I cannot single her out. There is Laura, too. And it might seem invidious, although as the eldest of them all, Alicia is entitled to especial consideration. I cannot moreover allow Pendleton to observe that I have kept his children shabby. Few are the claims that Pendleton can legitimately array against me, but the shabbiness of the children would too flagrantly proclaim my failure. Nor does Dibdin know as yet my rake's progress since Fred Salmon made a business man of me.