"Yes," I told him. "The Shoe pinches, I must find another."
"Well, you're a funny old geezer," was his laughing comment. I could do better than that in describing him.
When I come home depressed and weary I find a shower of little attentions awaiting me, very winning and touchingly agreeable. Little Jimmie, with great serious eyes, ostentatiously brings me my slippers and dressing gown and watches my face intently for the reward of commendation. When I murmur, "Thanks, old man, very good of you," I can virtually see his little pulses pounding with exultation in his veins.
"Are you vewy tired, Uncle Ranny?" he inquires, keeping up the high drama of profound concern.
"So, so, old chap," I tell him, kissing his serious little face. "Nothing to worry about." A moment later I hear him dashing about the dining room very properly and completely oblivious of my fatigue.
Laura in the rôle of Hebe, gravely brings me tea on a small tray, and asks whether there is any book I desire or anything else that she might bring me.
But behind all these attentions I discern the directing hand of Alicia. Can it be that the child has instinctively divined that I have actually broken with Gertrude on her account, that the little woman's soul in her secretly exults in a feeling of victory? Since she cannot know all the conditions, she can feel, at most, I suppose, only a vague primitive sense of triumph in defeating the will of another woman. Perhaps I am attributing too much to her young intelligence, but at times I seem to perceive in her eyes, in her bearing, a touch of the protective instinct, of almost the maternal toward me, that I had never observed in her before. Possibly it is merely a sense of gratitude. At all events, those attentions of the little people are very soothing and grateful, notably now, since Griselda's have declined perforce, in view of her greatly increased work in the kitchen. Yet it staggers me at times when I realize the number of souls for whose shelter and livelihood I am responsible, for the complex machinery that I must keep revolving. Experience like that should be acquired young. Like Mr. Roosevelt, I would advocate early marriages.
I have found a house.
In Crestlands (thrilling are the names of suburbs!) thirty-five minutes from Grand Central Station, in Westchester County. I came upon a châlet-like cottage built largely upon a rock that I believe will answer our purpose. The rent is moderate and there is said to be an asparagus bed somewhere in the "grounds." I know there are two trees with gnarled roots grasping their way downward among the stones, in a business-like struggle for existence, and there are a few inches of lawn for the children. With a veritable terrain like that as dower, it will surprise no one that I took the cottage.
"The latitude's rather uncertain, and the longitude also is vague," as vague, almost, as that of Roumania; nevertheless I shall be henceforth a dweller of Suburbia.