And under his quaintly formal rhymed words, how Wordsworth’s deep heart had melted into the same beatitude, “… that I almost received her heart into my own.” “Into my own!” Helen’s father knew now how literally a man could feel that about a little girl.
And yet this did not mean that he thought Helen was perfect. No, poor child, with her too flexible mind, her too sensitive nerves, her lack of power and courage, Helen needed all the help she could get if she were not to be totally undone by life. He knew a thing or two about how ruthless life is to anyone who lacks power and courage! Helen must learn how to stand up to things and not lie down and give up. He would find ways to teach her … yes, he knew wincingly what sarcastic people would ask, “How could he teach her what he had never learned himself?” But the fact that he had never learned himself was the very reason for his understanding the dire need for it. Perhaps it might come from athletics. She must learn to play on a team, how to take rough, careless, good-natured knocks, and return them and pass on her way. As soon as he could get about on crutches, somehow—perhaps he would go to the physical-training teacher at school and have a talk about Helen. Perhaps he could get up an outdoor basketball team of the children here on the street. He had plans, all sorts of plans. Above all, Helen must go to college. It wasn’t so much, going to college; he had no illusions about it. For a strong personality like Stephen’s it might very well not be worth while. But for a bookish, sensitive, complicated nature like Helen’s, the more her intelligence was shaped and pointed and sharpened and straightened out, the better. She would need it all to cope with herself. She was not one for whom action, any action provided it were violent enough, would suffice.
Would it for Henry? How about Henry, anyhow? How everybody always left Henry out! That was because there wasn’t anything unusual about the nice little boy. He was a nice little boy, and if he grew to his full stature, he would be a nice man, a good citizen, a good husband. No leader of men, but a faithful common soldier—well, perhaps a sergeant—in the great army of humanity.
But he had a right to his own life, didn’t he, even if he weren’t unusual? You didn’t want everybody to be unusual. There were moods in which Lester Knapp took the greatest comfort in Henry’s being just like anybody else. So much the better for him! For everybody! There would never be tragedy in his life, no thwarted, futile struggling against an organization of things that did not fit him. At times, too, there was something poignant to Lester about Henry’s patient, unrebellious attitude. He never fought to get what he wanted. He stood back, took what others left, and with a touching, unconscious resignation, made the best of it. All the more reason for Henry’s father to stand up for him, to think of how to get him more of what he wanted.
He began to plan for Henry now. What would Henry naturally want? Just what any little boy wanted. The recipe was well known: Playmates of his own age, a “gang”; some kind of shack in the woods to play pirate; games, lots and lots of games; a pet of his own; perhaps a job at which he could earn real money of his own to spend on a baseball mitt or a bicycle.
Why, Henry didn’t have a single one of those things, not one. And he was eleven years old.
That afternoon when the children came home, he waited till they had unpacked their minds of the school-news, and then asked casually, “Say, Henry, wouldn’t you like to have a puppy to bring up? I used to think the world of my dog when I was your age.”
A quick startled look passed between Henry and Helen, a look rather wild with the unexpectedness of their father’s question. Henry flushed very red and looked down dumbly at his piece of bread and butter.
Helen spoke for him, placatingly, “You see, Father … you see … Mother never wanted Henry to … but … well, Henry has a puppy, sort of.”
Seeing nothing but expectant interest in her father’s face, she went on, “Old Mrs. Hennessy’s Laura had puppies about six weeks ago, and Mrs. Hennessy said Henry could have one. Henry always did want one, so. And Henry”—her accent was increasingly apologetic—“Henry sort of did pick out one for his. It’s white with black spots. Awfully cunning. Noontimes Henry runs over from school to the Hennessys’ to play with it. Mrs. Hennessy and Laura are weaning the puppies now. He’s beginning to lap milk. Oh, Father, haven’t they got the darlingest little red tongues! Henry’s named him Rex. Mrs. Hennessy said Henry could keep it at her house, because Mother. …”
A new possibility opened before her like the horizon lifting, “Oh, Father, do you suppose she would let Henry have it now?”
The “now” referred to the change in Mother which they all noticed, but never mentioned, even in so distant a manner as this “now.” It had slipped out in Helen’s excitement. Lester took no notice of it.
“Do you s’pose she would?” asked Henry, in an agitated voice. He was now quite pale.
“Heavens, what a sensitive little chap he is!” thought Lester. “How worked up he does get over little things.” Aloud he
