Anne scrambled to her feet, leaving her beetle on his back, vainly imploring the ceiling with his many active legs. Big girl that she was she threw herself upon her mother’s lap, and hugged her hard.
“Like you, just for all the world, ’xactly like you, you most precious, beautiful motherkins, Barbara Berkley!” Anne choked herself in choking her mother. “You help everybody in this family on their feet, and you just lead ’em right along! I wonder where’d I’d be if ’twasn’t for you showing me lovely things? Just like black beetle allegories this minute! My father, Peter Berkley, wouldn’t be hardly anything if ’twasn’t for you! You know yourself he’d never in this world remember rubbers! And prob’ly he’d die of it. And Joan—well, what in the world do you s’pose she’d do with the baby if she didn’t ask you? And as to Peter-two——!” Words for once failed Anne. Her opinion of her obstreperous fourteen-year-old brother was luckily deprived of expression. He was surer of his own vocation than Anne was of hers; it was clear to him that his calling in life was to suppress Anne.
“Dear me, Anne-baby!” gasped Mrs. Berkley. “You have hugged me breathless and my hair is coming down! Not that I am not glad that you are satisfied with me as a mother, little Anne!”
“Satisfied? Doesn’t that mean sort of getting-along-with-it?” asked Anne, the student of words.
“Oh, no. It means that a thing exactly suits you in every way,” explained Mrs. Berkley.
“Your hair isn’t coming down; it’s only rather loose. It’s prettiest down, anyway; I’ll fix it,” said Anne. “Satisfied doesn’t sound like that when people say it; they say it in a getting-along tone. When Joan got that centrepiece from Antony’s Aunt Lil last Christmas she said: ‛Oh, well, of course I’m satisfied with it!’ Like that! ’Cause she per-fect-ly detests Renaissance lace. And don’t you remember Peter-two made that awful bad joke about it? He said it was re-nuisance. Nuisance, you know, mother! Don’t you see? Because Joan put it away to give someone else; that’s what made the re part of the joke: an over-again nuisance, Mother! Joan said it was a perfec’ly stupid joke; she said it was a pun. What makes me remember bad jokes, Mother? I keep remembering Peter’s worst ones. Joan said she was satisfied, but she means to give that centrepiece to someone else; Joan said to Mr. Richard Latham, because he was blind, but Joan didn’t mean it; Joan never means anything not kind, like that! Now your hair isn’t loose, lovely motherkins! I see Joan coming in the back way. She hasn’t brought Barbara—— Mercy me! I forgot my beetle and Joan’ll step on him, kersmash! Joan would never see a beetle; she goes along thinking of Antony Paul and Toots! I don’t blame her; that’s the loveliest baby I ever in all my lifetime saw! And I always did say Antony was ’most too good for Joan, if she is my sister. I never expected in all my lifetime to have a brother-in-law who was half as nice as Antony Paul—so there!”
“Oh, Anne!” sighed Mrs. Berkley, her conscientious motherhood weighing upon her. “My hair may not be loose, but what about your little red tongue, my dear? I am afraid that Peter is right, and that we spoil you, child!”
“Oh, no, no, indeed, Mother!” Anne earnestly reassured her. “You bring me up just right. You let me do about everything that isn’t wicked, only just a weeny bit kind of not like every little girl, but if I wanted a crime you wouldn’t let me have it, and you teach me noble things—catechism and everything!”
Mrs. Berkley laughed her soft inward, chuckling laugh, as she often did at Anne’s speeches.
“Such high-coloured words, little Anne! Fancy craving a crime!