Her first call on us, though, was when she blew in last Sunday afternoon and announced that she'd come to see "that dear, darling man child" of ours. And for a girl of her size Amelia is some breeze, take it from me. Honest, for the first ten minutes or so there I felt like our happy little home had been hit by a young tornado.
"Where is he?" she demands. "Please take me at once into the regal presence of his youthful majesty."
I noticed Vee sizin' her up panicky, and I knew she was thinkin' of what might happen to them spindle-legged white chairs in the nursery.
"How nice of you to want to see him!" says Vee. "But let me have Baby brought down here. Just a moment."
And she steers her towards a solid built davenport that we'd been meanin' to have reupholstered anyway. Then we was treated to a line of high-brow gush as Amelia inspects the youngster through her shell lorgnette and tries to tell us in impromptu blank verse how wonderful he is.
"Ah, he is one of the sun children, loved of the high gods," says she, rollin' her eyes. "He comes to you wearing the tints of dawn and trailing clouds of glory. You remember how Wordsworth puts it?"
As she fires this straight at me, I has to say something.
"Does he?" I asks.
"I am always impressed," she gurgles on, "by the calm serenity in the eyes of these little ones. It is as if they——"
But just then Snoodlekins begins screwin' up his face. He's never been mauled around by a lady poetess before, or maybe it was just because there was so much of her. Anyway, he tears loose with a fine large howl and the serenity stuff is all off. It takes Vee four or five minutes to soothe him.