In the Garden of Delight

by Lily Hardy Hammond

Cousin Jane looked at me sharply, but Cousin Chad was already heaving her into the buggy, and she turned to get a good grip on the side. The vehicle creaked as she settled in it, and groaned when Cousin Chad sank beside her.

“Good-bye, Lyddy,” she said. “We’ve done our best. I hope you won’t regret it.”

This quite upset me, and after the cedars hid them I lay laughing until the thought of poor little Caro suddenly sobered me. What were they doing to Billy’s child? I must make friends with Cousin Jane, somehow, and entice the little thing over to Bird Corners as much as possible.

There was no one else whom our erratic manner of life really scandalized, except Cousin Jason Blue; and he, as he took occasion to tell me when he met me out driving one day with Caro, never made a fool of himself like Chad Grackle by meddling. If a woman wanted to follow her nature and behave like a lunatic, and her husband chose to allow it, it was none of his business; so he shrugged his shoulders and passed on.

Cousin Jason and the Grackles are the only kin I have in all Chatterton whose kinship I would discount if I could; but there is no denying they belong in the family. Cousin Chad’s father was my grandmother’s third half-cousin on my father’s side; and Cousin Jason’s mother was Cousin Lysander Hilliard’s step-daughter by his second marriage: there could scarcely be anything plainer than that.

And if Cousin Jason had his drawbacks, there are none about his half-sister, Grace, fifteen years his junior, and, except Ella, the dearest friend I have. She married George Wood soon after I married the Peon, and they have a daughter, Milly, about the age of Caro Wrenn.

David took kindly to country life, and to his numerous cousins-by-marriage. There were plenty of boys among them; and though at first they resented David’s city ways, their respect for him grew immensely when they found how far he could bat a ball; and after he had whipped Bob White in single combat he was admitted to Chatterton boydom as a comrade in full fellowship. There was no particular reason for his fighting Bob, so far as we dull grown-ups could discover, except that Bob was the leader of his set, and a fight was considered the necessary initiation to membership. As soon as this was made clear to him, David had painstakingly trodden on Bob’s toes, and the preliminaries were arranged at once. The boys were excellent friends, before and afterward; and the Peon would not allow me to discuss the matter with David. They talked it out in private, and reached some amicable male conclusion of their own.

Of the girl cousins David was loftily tolerant, excepting Caro Wrenn. She was five years old the spring we came back to the country, when David was half-past nine. Her mother had died when she was born, and her father, Billy Wrenn, had gone to Colorado three years afterward, to die there of consumption. He made Cousin Chad Caro’s guardian before he died, knowing, as we all did, Cousin Chad’s remarkable ability in reaping financial harvests from even the smallest investments; but he left the child herself with her mother’s sister, Sally Martin, never dreaming that death would again bereave the little creature of a mother’s love. Sally died, quite suddenly, less than a year after Billy; and Cousin Chad and Cousin Jane, intent, as usual, on doing their impeccable duty, assumed sole care of the little heiress, and installed her in their own childless and virtuous home.

A more incongruous setting for her could scarcely have been found. She was a tiny creature, with rose-leaf skin, great hazel eyes, a mop of red-brown curls, and a mouth where laughter bubbled all day long. Quick and bird-like in all her movements, she flitted in and out of the most unexpected recesses in the twinkling of an eye, with endless flutterings of hands and skirts and sweet gurglings of suppressed laughter. Almost from her cradle she sang—queer little soft croonings which slipped into tunes before she could speak their words. Cousin Jane scarcely knew what to make of her, and was torn between a sincere desire to do her Spartanly-Christian duty by her, and her solemn puzzlement over what she considered the child’s combination of depravity and charm. Even Cousin Jane could not be very severe with her; but she had an uneasy sense of spoiling her every time she forebore the rod, so that I found her more than willing to turn the child over to me for the greater part of the time.

This arrangement gave my revered relative ample warrant for looking closely into my household affairs and reproving me for everything she did and didn’t discover; it was her duty to know all about a place where dear Caroline spent so much of her time. And when Caro departed from Cousin Jane’s ideals, as she did with every movement of body and mind, it was a great relief to my pious cousin to be able publicly to disavow all responsibility for the child’s shortcomings. What, as she constantly inquired, could one expect of Caroline when that scatter-brained Lyddy would persist in encouraging the child in her flightiness? She published abroad her own powerlessness to control either Caro or the situation, and openly washed her hands of the consequences.