The time is sunset, and it is summer. A little child, whose flesh seems moulded from its mother’s milk, is playing on the little green lawn before Mrs. Buzzell’s porch. It is a creature of exuberant life, of movement incessant, of inexhaustible joy. She has pure blue eyes, and her hair is long, straight, and fine like spun gold. It dances and streams out in the sunlight with the movements of her little frame, as she dances, and laughs, and sings. At first, being carefully and very coquettishly dressed by “Auntie,” and let loose upon the lawn, it was joy enough to simply dance and carol in the sunlight, but soon this ceased to suffice her. Her active brain and fingers must have more positive occupation; and a few minutes later “Auntie,” coming out on the porch, discovered the sprite pirouetting around her beautiful caladium, a huge leaf-tip in each dimpled hand.
“Min! Min! what are you doing?” The electric current of joy was cut off instantly, and the child pouted:—
“I’m only dancing with auntie’s cladium.”
“Will you let my cladium, as you call it, alone? I won’t have its leaves twisted to rags.” But further admonition was unnecessary, for Minnie descried a well-known horse and “sulky,” and she ran toward the gate, crowing at the top of her voice. The doctor jumped out of the vehicle and took the child in his arms, saying, “Well, how is my little Min to-day?”
“Auntie’s cwoss,” was the somewhat irrelevant response.
“Cross, is she?” he repeated, taking Mrs. Buzzell’s hand; “then Minnie must have been a naughty girl.”
“No, se wasn’t naughty; an auntie nee’n’t be so wough” (rough).
She was one of those elfin creatures whose accents and gestures, and charming self-asserting confidence that the machinery of the universe is run for their special amusement, make it difficult to resist indulging them in every way. Minnie made you laugh at her, and then she felt sure of her victory over you. The only dispute Mrs. Buzzell and Susie had ever had, was on Min’s account; the former declaring that Susie was not quite tender enough to the child. Susie replied, “I think I love her as much as any mother should. I shall devote my life principally to her care and education; but I cannot spend so much time in amusing her as you do, unless I neglect what is of far more consequence.”
Susie was reading when the doctor entered. She rose, and greeting him, as she always did, with frank cordiality, held out her book. It was a copy of Roderick Random.
“Doctor, you choose my serious reading, I believe with exemplary discretion; but shall I waste my precious time and peril my immortal soul over such trash as this? Trash is too flattering a name for it. I must borrow yours. I call it, unqualifiedly, rot.” The doctor laughed, and said: