Papa's own girl: A novel

by Marie Stevens Howland

Mrs. Buzzell came in good season. She was a prim lady of sixty or more, dressed in a neat black grenadine dress, open to a point from the throat. This open space was filled in with spotless illusion lace, fastened with a little jet brooch. Her white hair was beautifully rolled in three puffs on either side of her head, and surmounted by a white cap with a border or frill, and lavender-colored strings. She was a very active, industrious person, though a sufferer from her ailments. During the afternoon she spoke of her digestion several times. On these occasions Clara made a knowing, mischievous sign to her mother, who was dignifiedly oblivious, apparently, to what her saucy daughter was thinking.

Clara set the tea-table herself with her mother’s choice old china, which seemed to feel its rare importance only when arranged upon a snowy cloth. After all Mrs. Forest’s anxiety, the tea was as delightfully respectable as her heart could wish. The twins, however, set up in their high chairs, detracted a good deal from the solemnity of the occasion, for their behavior, always especially bad when “company” was present, was sufficient to make Mrs. Buzzell’s cap-border stand up in consternation. They kicked the under side of the table with the toes of their little shoes, setting the cups dancing in their saucers, whenever the supply of honey gave out and was not instantly renewed, or when reproved by their gentle mother for the quantity of cake they thought proper to discuss. Whenever their conduct became unbearable, a kind of semi-yell from Dan distracted their attention for a few moments, enabling the ladies to continue their mild comments upon the diseases incident to children, and the superior taste of the new milliner’s bonnets and caps.

Clara silently watched and anticipated the wants of the twins, wearing a weary, responsible look, for they weighed upon her young life like the world upon the shoulders of Atlas. Since they were babies, creeping about, putting everything animate or inanimate into their mouths, and calling every man papa who approached them, Clara had gradually assumed more and more the care of them, being stronger in mind and body than her mother. Her method of managing these irrepressibles, was very reprehensible in one respect, but she had been led into it by the necessity of some method, and the impossibility of moving the rebellious little tyrants by any reasonable means. She had taken advantage of their passion for doing anything they were forbidden to do, even though that in itself were disagreeable to them. For example, after tea the great desideratum was to get the twins upstairs to bed, for there was little possibility of quiet conversation where they were. The doctor had just come in, and was very contentedly sipping his rather insipid tea, and gathering up what remained of the eatables, to the accompaniment of a somewhat detailed account of Mrs. Buzzell’s “wretched digestion.”

“Now, Linnie,” said Clara, “you wish to stay down and play, don’t you? but Clara is going upstairs.” It was never necessary to address but one at a time, for whatever one decided to do was certain to be immediately repeated by the other. By the time she had reached the stairs, Linnie dropped her toys and started, Leila following closely, both determined to perish rather than stay down-stairs, as they supposed they were expected to do. Once arrived in the sleeping chamber, similar manœuvres inveigled the twins into bed, and when they were finally sleeping, Clara went down to the sitting-room. The doctor noticed her weary look, and said, “My child, you have too much responsibility. Papa must try to send you away to school. I have been thinking of your method in managing those children. Surely you do not think you are right in controlling them by such motives?”

“I suppose not, papa,” answered Clara, who had sat down on a stool at her father’s side, and was “resting,” as she used to call it, in the magnetic caresses of his hand upon her brown hair; “but it saves time.”

“Ah! my daughter. How many follies are committed under that plea! See what you do by this course. In the first place, you cultivate obstinacy in the little ones, which is bad enough, and then you dull the fine edge of your conscience by doing what your better sense condemns, I am sure.”

“She is not so much to be blamed,” said Mrs. Forest. “It is one of Dan’s tricks. She learned it from him.”

“What does papa’s girl think of that as an excuse?” he asked, studying her fine face.

“I don’t think it excuses me, papa. I know it does not.”

“You are right. Dan should learn of you, not you of him, in matters of conscience. I only wish he had your conscientiousness, and your love of books, too. I never see him reading. I wonder where the young rat is to-night.” Clara knew pretty well where Dan was, but for his sake she kept silent. She was always merciful to his delinquencies; probably from the fear that she did not love him as she believed a sister should love her brother. No two children could well be more unlike; and for years he had bullied her unmercifully, though he would not permit others to do so, and his tough little fist was ready to the head of any urchin in school or in the street, who dared to show the least disrespect for his sister. He monopolized that matter himself, and carried teazing to cruel extremes. She was easily irritated by him, especially in her earlier years, and whenever he saw her becoming angry, it was a constant practice of his to seize both her hands and hold them as in a vise, mocking her impotent rage until it grew to murder in her heart. This was a persecution so often repeated that it had completely destroyed all her natural tenderness for him, which the sensitive child reproached herself for, and sought to atone by treating him with great kindness.