fter declaring that she alone was David's mother, Miss Eastman was called away to the telephone. It was Dr. Redfield inquiring anxiously about the little boy. Pulse normal, temperature normal, no symptoms of any sort, she told the physician, but she could scarcely control her voice to answer his questions. There was a tightness in her throat, and she spoke with crisp brevity, instead of detailing anything of what had passed between her and David.
When she had hung up the receiver and gone back to the child, she took him in her lap and tried to entertain him with a book of "Mother Goose" jingles, turning the pages slowly and concealing her emotion under the silliness of the nursery rhymes. In the midst of her comical recital about Jack and Jill who went up the hill, she suddenly exclaimed:
"What great fun it was to be with Doctor!"
No matter how much she might try to divert her little boy, he was only indifferently amused; but presently he remembered something which, for the time being, caused him to forget the broken and pilfered miniature.
"Mother," he exulted, "Mother, I got 'em! They have pockets—deep pockets. You don't hardly know me, do you?"
David began strutting up and down the room; he stood still, with legs wide apart, and then dug his fists deep into his pockets.
Of course mother was astounded. It required only a little make-believe on her part to indicate that this was some strange boy whom she had never seen before. The surprising change in him had impressed her so disagreeably that she had been in no mood to speak of it. Even as she had taken off the wide-brimmed sailor hat, when David reached the house in Dr. Redfield's arms, she had made no comment on the close-cropped, flaxen head. She had of course remarked each detail of the little boy's altered appearance, but what she had seen even more clearly was the look in the man's face when he had told her that her little boy was not well. It was this that she had seen at a glance, and it was this that she had taken deeply to heart, but now she diligently tried to enter into the spirit of trouvers.
All of a sudden the earnest look in David's face was swept away by a smile. His little legs began to dance; his hands danced, and his piping laughter danced best of all. Making a prancing dash for Mother's skirts, he demanded that she smell the good, barber smell of his hair. But she laughed such a queer laugh, as she gathered him up in her arms, that the gleefulness suddenly went out of him.
"I'm afraid," she said, "I'm afraid there's not enough left of your hair to smell."
The suspicion came to David that Mother was not glad. Instead of applauding his fine hair-cut, she had a silly way of asking what had been done with the curls.