“Tommy, I wish you would ask Miss Betty to come in to see me some day,” Meadowcroft called down—“some day soon, please.”
“Sure. That’s just her line. She’ll be pleased to accept,” Tommy called back cheerfully, and was off again, whistling gaily if not very tunefully as he strolled up the avenue towards home.
CHAPTER II
MRS. PHILLIPS had friends in Paulding and other towns nearby, and though she was in mourning and did not go out much, entertained constantly at home. But on this particular night she and her brother were alone at dinner, and he took occasion to ask her about the young girl in whom he already felt warm interest. For though Mrs. Phillips did not associate with the village people, she knew the history of everyone and was always informed as to what was going on about her.
“O—Bouncing Bet, you mean?” she exclaimed, and laughed in her pretty, artificial way. “I wonder, Humphrey, if you remember a story we read as children—at least, I did—called ‘The Baby Giant’?”
Meadowcroft did not recall it.
“Well, Bouncing Bet always makes me think of the pictures in that story—there’s one where he’s climbing over a wall, and is stuck, I believe—she’s just so big and lumbering, with just such a big baby face and placid sort of cow-like expression. Then there’s another where the baby giant is crying—such an absurd spectacle, his mouth puckered up, fists in his eyes, and baby tears rolling down the cheeks of a six- or eight- or I-don’t-know-how-many-footer. Well, when Bouncing Bet was ever so much younger, but big as a girl of twelve really, she used to cry if the children called her names; and, Humphrey, she was the baby giant over again. I just wish you could have seen her.”
Her brother didn’t echo her wish. He changed the subject rather abruptly. He didn’t like the idea of a woman recalling with unmixed amusement the picture of a big little girl crying because her feelings were hurt. And he felt the more concerned for the girl.
He watched for her rather eagerly next morning. Presently he caught sight of her coming towards the house, head and shoulders above her companion. She walked slowly, of a truth, as Tommy had said, and he had opportunity for a searching scrutiny.
Tall and very large, Meadowcroft saw that the girl was square and massive, so to speak, rather than fat. She was altogether too large—he couldn’t gainsay that—but she wasn’t shapeless or clumsy. With different clothing her figure wouldn’t, Meadowcroft decided, be bad; it would be rather like certain Greek statues, indeed, though her proportions probably exceeded the most ample of those marbles, and she was, perhaps, too big even for an Amazon.