But Miss Cooter sternly shook her head, and, bending over the cradle which contained Harold, looked sternly in his flushed and disfigured countenance. He immediately held his breath, growing from crimson to purple and from purple to black as she delivered her inaugural address.
“My dear Har’ld,” said she, with crisp distinctness, “you are a vurry little boy——”
“Hear, hear!” I interpolated, and got a frown from Leila.
“And at three months old your reasoning fahculties are not developed enough for you to comprehend that what you don’t like may be the best thing for you. Mary has gone, and Mary will not come back. Henceforth you are in my cayah, and you will find me fyum, but gentle. However badly you may act, I shall not punish you.”
Harold hiccoughed and stared up at the bright, intellectual face above him with round, astonished eyes and open, dribbling mouth.
“Your own sense of what is right and what is wrawng, dormant though it be at this vurry moment, I intend to awaken and——”
Harold, never before in his brief life harangued after this fashion, appeared to grasp already the idea that something was wrong. The expression of astonishment faded, his down-drooped mouth assumed the bell or trumpet-shape, and, rapidly doubling and undoubling himself with mechanical regularity, he emitted the most astonishing series of sounds we had yet heard from him. No caresses were administered for the assuagement of his woe, no broken English babbled in his infant ears. The Rules of the System of Child Culture absolutely prohibited petting, and baby-language was denounced by Miss Cooter as “pynicious.”
As she predicted, Harold left off howling after a certain interval.
“Now I guess you have lyned one lesson already!” said Miss Cooter. “When you are older, Har’ld, you will cawmprehend that the truest kindness on your payrents’ part praumpted the separation that has given you pain. You will have your bottle now; you will say ‘Thank you’ for it, and ahfter consuming the contents, you will go quietly to sleep.”
But it took a long time to convince the dubious Harold that the trumpet-shaped, nickel-silver-stoppered vessel tendered by his new guardian was the equivalent of his beloved and familiar “Maw.” When finally convinced, he grabbed it without the slightest attempt at saying “Thank you,” and, with the gloomiest scowl that I have ever beheld upon a countenance of such pulpy immaturity, applied himself to deglutition. Miss Cooter shook her head discouragingly.