“She shall get her little broom and Fardie will help her,” said Langshaw, catching the child up in his arms and holding the round little form closely to him before putting her down carefully on her stubby feet.
Later, when the game of clearing up was over and the nickel clutched in Baby’s fat palm, he turned to his wife with a half-frown:
“Don’t you think you are making the children rather mercenary, Clytie? They seem to want to be paid for everything they do. I’m just about drained out of change!”
“Oh, at Christmas!” said the wife expressively.
“Well, I hope nobody is going to spend any money on me; the only presents I want are those you make for me,” said Langshaw warningly. He gave the same warning each year, undeterred by the nature of the articles produced. His last year’s “Christmas” from Clytie had been a pair of diaphanous blue China-silk pyjamas that were abnormally large in chest and sleeves—as for one of giant proportions—and correspondingly contracted in the legs, owing to her cutting out the tops first and having to get the other necessary adjuncts out of the scant remainder of the material. “You hear me, Clytie?”
“Yes, I hear,” returned Clytie in a bored tone.
“Do you know—” Langshaw hesitated, a boyish smile overspreading his countenance. “I was looking at that trout-rod in Burchell’s window today. I don’t suppose you remember my speaking of it, but I’ve had my eye on it for a long time.” He paused, expectant of encouraging interest.
“Oh, have you, dear?” said Clytie absently. The room was gradually, under her fingers, resuming its normal appearance. She turned suddenly with a vividly animated expression.
“I must tell you that you’re going to get a great surprise tonight—it isn’t a Christmas present, but it’s something that you’ll like even better, I know. It’s about something that George has been doing. You’ll never guess what it is!”
“Is that so?” said Langshaw absently in his turn. He had a momentary sense of being set back in his impulse to confidences that was not, after all, untinged with pleasure. His delightful secret was still his own, unmarred by unresponsive criticism. “By the way, Clytie, I don’t like the way George has been behaving lately. He hasn’t shown me his report from school in months; whenever I ask him for it he has some excuse. Hello! Is that little Mary crying?”
“I wonder what on earth has happened now!” exclaimed the mother, rushing from the room, to return the next instant, pulling after her a red-cloaked and red-hatted little girl who sought to hide behind her.
“Well, what do you think she’s done?” Clytie’s tone was withering as she haled forth the shrinking culprit, her small hands over her eyes. “She lost her purse with the dollar she had saved up for your Christmas present—lost the money for dear father’s present; and all because she took it with her to buy a five-cent pencil—a green pencil with purple glass in the end of it; to buy something for herself before Christmas!” Clytie paused tragically. “Of course, if she hadn’t taken her money out to spend it on herself she wouldn’t have lost it!”
“I don’t care!” burst out the culprit, her big dark eyes, just like her mother’s, flashing from under her brown curls, and her red lips set defiantly. “It was my own money, anyhow, if I did lose it. I earned it all myself. It wasn’t yours!”
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” interposed the father in gentle reproof. “Little girls mustn’t talk like that to dear mother. Come, get up here on father’s knee—so.” He took off the red cap, tucked the brown curly head in the bend of his arm, his chin resting on the top of it as he went on, with the child’s small hands clutching at his. “Mary must always do what mother says; but, so far as this money is concerned, you can make me something that I would like far better than anything you could buy. Why don’t you make me another pincushion, for instance? The one you gave me last year is quite worn out.”
“A pink one?” asked Mary faintly.
“Yes. What’s the matter now?” The child had suddenly wriggled to a kneeling posture in his hold and had her little strangling arms round his neck in a tempest of sobs.
“I don’t want to give you a pi-ink pincushion—I don’t want to! I want my dollar! I want my dollar—to spend! I want—Father, I want my dollar—my do-o-ol-lar! I want my—”
“What did I tell you, Mary Langshaw?” cried Clytie. She appealed to her husband. “It’s just the way I knew she’d act. Now I suppose you’ll have to give it to her. Mary, be still a moment—her head is so hot!”
“There, there!” said Langshaw soothingly. “She shall have her money this minute.”
“Of course she doesn’t deserve it,” said Clytie, but with a tone of relief in her voice that seemed oddly greater than the occasion warranted. Mary had wound herself round him passionately; her sobs were dying away happily in long, deep breaths at intervals. Baby, being undressed on her mother’s lap, was laughing over some pieces of gilt paper. In the heart of this domesticity it was as if the father and mother were embarked with this little company on a full and swelling river of love, of which they felt the exquisite soothing ripples.
Langshaw put his hand into his pocket.
“No, I can’t give you the dollar this minute, little girl; father has only a ten-dollar bill. I’ll get it changed right after dinner. Isn’t dinner ’most ready, Clytie?”
“We’ll go down just as soon as I get Baby in bed,” said the mother peacefully. “I don’t see why George isn’t here. Goodness! There he is now,” she added as a tremendous slam of the front door announced the fact. The next moment a small boy, roguishly blue-eyed and yellow-haired like Baby, with an extremely dirty face and a gray sweater half covered with mud, hurled himself into the room, surreptitiously tickling one of Baby’s bare feet and pulling Mary’s curls on his way to greet his father.
“What have you been doing to get so dirty?”
“Playing cops and robbers,” said the boy, serenely. His dimples appeared suddenly; his eyes lit up. “Say, mother”—he turned to her irresolutely—“shall I tell father now?”
“Not until after dinner,” returned the mother inexorably. “Go and make yourself clean!”
“May I put on my white silk tie?” George’s white tie was the banner of festivity.
“Yes.”
“You rouse my curiosity. This seems to be a great occasion,” said Langshaw.
“Oh, it is!” agreed the mother happily. She murmured in his ear as they went downstairs: “I hope you’ll show that you’re pleased, dear. You know sometimes when you really are pleased you don’t show it at once—and George has been trying so hard. If you’ll only show that you’re pleased—”
“Yes—all right!” returned the husband a little impatiently. Clytie had a sensitive consideration for her son’s feelings which struck him at times as exaggerated. He thought of the delightful secret back in his own mind; there was no reason for talking any more about the rod until he bought it; he would manage to replace the dollar abstracted from the reserve fund.
If he gave absent answers during the meal Clytie seemed to be preoccupied also. Little Mary, who sat by him, tucked her hand into his as she prattled.
“Now, George!” said his mother at last suddenly when the rice pudding had been finished. George rose, clean and red-cheeked, looking more than ever like a large edition of Baby, in spite of his jacket and knickerbockers, as he stepped over to his father with a new dignity and handed him a folded sheet of paper.
“What’s this?” asked Langshaw genially opening it. He read aloud the words within, written laboriously in a round, boyish hand:
To George Brander