CHAPTER XXIX

DOCTOR GARDE’S LITTLE GIRL

Bluebell approached father’s knee with her heart swelling.

“Where’s my little girl?” said he.

His long light locks and serious face seemed to hang on the outer surface of her tears. The tears were filling her eyes so fast; she struggled to hold them still, but a splash came down on one of the hands with which he was holding her waist.

“Why, I’m here!”

“I don’t seem to find you.”

“Why, father, I don’t know what you mean!”

The cry was under full headway now. Her figure quaked. She groped piteously for her handkerchief, her eyes held in a charmed gaze by his. He drew her upon his knee. At that Roxana descended from her position and claimed a right on the other knee.

Sitting opposite her afflicted sister, she stroked the muslin-gingham dress.

“Don’t t’y, Bluebell. _I’ve_ tum to your house.”

“I would like to have my little girl stay a little girl,” said father, “until Nature turns her into a woman. I don’t say I am altogether right.”

He paused, conscious that a child will accept its elder’s dictum without question, and believe a thing to be unalterably good or evil, according to the decision of the adult who happens to be over it in authority. “But I don’t like young ladies in short clothes.”

“I thought you’d be pleased to see me learning fine manners,” wailed Bluebell.

“_Don’t_ t’y,” begged Rocco, puckering in sympathy.

“Fine manners are very nice,” said the doctor. “But you seem to be imitating somebody else. I can’t think it is a good thing to form yourself after other people. I may be wrong; but I like to see everybody live out his own nature.”

“Don’t you want me to learn to be a little lady?”

Father looked perplexed.

“I want you to learn everything which goes to make up a finished woman. Yes, I want you to be a lady, but”--with a pathetic tone in his voice which had vibrated only once or twice in her lifetime--“I wouldn’t give my honest, simple-hearted little girl for all the fine airs and graces in the world.”

Bluebell hugged him around the neck.

“That’s all I mean. Perhaps there’s a better way to bring up girls.”

“Father, I just want to be your way. And I tried to do like the rest, for fear you’d be ’shamed of me ’side of Libbie and Orrell.” The water-flow began to subside. Doctor Garde wiped its straggling droppings away with the hand which had supported his little girl. Then she leaned on his shoulder, nearer than she had ever been, and the arm was replaced.

“They always lived in Sharon, and I thought they knew better’n I did how to behave. Their hoops never stick out, and mine just act so mean!”

The doctor smiled again.

“Must you wear hoops?”

“Oh, yes, indeed, father! I _have_ to wear them. Folks would laugh at you on the street if you didn’t.”

“Don’t think,” continued father carefully, “that I am finding fault with Miss Calder’s kindness, or your trying to improve.”

“I thought you’d think it was nice for me to sit up and talk like grown folks. But, father, I won’t do it any more. Did anybody come with you, father?” added his little girl in the next breath.

“Nobody came but Rocco and me.”

“On Ballie?”

“On Ballie.”

“Are Tildy and Teeny well?”

She was asking with bright interest now, without aping anybody’s manners.

“Very well. Tildy sent you a letter.”

“Oh, father! Where is it?”

“I think Liza packed it in my trunk. That’s probably at Newark with the other baggage.”

Bluebell resigned herself to waiting with a deep sigh.

“Did they all go to g’ogr’phy school?”

“I believe so. The geography school is out.”

“Father, are you glad you came here?”

He looked deeply at the two on his knees.

“I shall always be glad if it proves a great benefit to my children.”

“I have read ever so much. Libbie Biggar don’t like reading.” She put her head on one side and blushed. “Would you mind--?”

“Mind what?”

“Would you mind if I gave you an awful hard hug, little father? because I’ve missed you so, and couldn’t get along just right without you.”

It was some time after tea that Archie was favored by visitors at the stable,--Bluebell, Rocco and Georgiana.

“I want to see her,” said Doctor Garde’s little girl. “Which is her stall, Archie?”

“Your father’s mare, ma’am?”

“Yes. And you said somebody else came with them. There was nobody but father and Rocco.”

“There was this very elegant creature, ma’am. Here she is in this stall. If you stand on the barn floor you can see her across the manger.”

Bluebell took that position with the little sister, and then climbed into the manger among Ballie’s oats to pat her tremulous nostril.

“Do you know me?”

The Arabian’s soft whinny answered her.

“Oh, Archie, I do think so much of her! She fell off the Narrows all but her fore feet, and jumped up again and kept father and me from being killed.”

Archie was duly astonished. He polished her satin surface, and declared she was the finest piece of horse-flesh that ever came into the stables.

“Charley and Coaly are fine animals, but they are too fat and too lazy. Now this here mare is all life; and look at them ears!”

“Oh, Archie, I’m so glad you like her! She’s so kind.”

“She’s most genteel,” said Archie.

Bluebell did not like the word, though it was then commonly current. She had heard Aunt Melissa use it. She had tried herself to be very genteel.

“I wouldn’t say she was genteel, Archie. I would just say she was Doctor Garde’s own horse; and that’s enough.”

“Your father’s a very fine gentleman,” declared Archie, smiling in his excessive amiability. “And your little sister, she’s quite a little lady.”

“Rocco,” said Bluebell to the baby when she got her between house and barn among the shrubbery, “I like you _real_ well, and better’n anybody in the world except father. Old honey-dew!”