“George! What a Tory!”
“Thank God!” replied Uncle, and shaking his finger at me: “Remember, Elsie, if Belle takes you to call on Mrs. Lien, you call on her money, on her father’s guilty money, remember that!”
“George, you dear old ass. Why do you put such ideas into the child’s head’?” (Child indeed!) Then turning to me: “Don’t pay any attention to what he says, Elsie. Old man Lien—as your Uncle calls him—may have made his start that way, but the great fortune they now have has grown from wise investment.”
“Exactly, if I sow a kernel of wheat and it produces twenty, it is the same wheat,” retorted Uncle.
“Nonsense!”
That was the end of it for a time, as we rose from the table. Mumsie put her arm about me and said: “Pay no attention to George, to what he says, when in a teasing mood. He’s incorrigible!” and she made a grimace at him which seemed to please him, for he seized her hand and squeezed it.
“I like him,” I said, when she and I were alone, and I think my tribute pleased her.
December 17th.
Last night after I went to bed I thought and thought. At last I am really “in the world.” I had read so often of Mrs. Lien in the society news in the city papers, that to be actually living in the house with one who would dare to attack her is cheering. And Mumsie is so glorious and dignified. Hers is a native dignity. I still feel as if her kindness were all about me like a glorious cloak. I wish I could put my present, overflowing happiness into cold storage, so that I could enjoy it bit by bit in after years.
Immediately after breakfast this morning Mumsie told me she was giving the day to the work of preparing for the Ragamuffins’ Feast. Mumsie is a woman of capacity and makes no false moves.