“Oh! Oh! For me?” cried Mamma. “Oh, you sweet pet!”
“Thank you, thank you!” caroled Mr. Lacey roguishly, trilling his laughter.
“Oh, Mr. Lacey! Fie! How can you? I mean this sweet little pet—yes, it was a pet, so it was. Let me see, what shall I call it? What shall I call it, children?”
“Call it Trixie.”
“Call it Brownie.”
“What shall Mamma call the doggie, Victor, precious?”
“I don’t know, Mamma.”
“I didn’t like to think of you without any dog at all,” Mr. Lacey explained. For silky, black Trusty was dead. He was buried in the garden, and already a little peach tree was growing up out of his grave, from the stone of a peach that the weeping Lily had absentmindedly eaten at his burial.
“Call it Lassie, Mamma,” May suggested.
“That’s a good idea, honey. Lassie! That’s very pretty! Here, Lassie, Lassie, Lassie. Here, little Lassie!”
Mr. Lacey was in a quandary. How to tell her delicately that Lassie was a Laddie? Perhaps he had better get his sister to tell her—but no. Em had a way of putting things so strongly. So presently—not too soon to be embarrassing—he called to the pug:
“Here, Lad! Here, sir!”
But Mamma couldn’t bring herself to say “Laddie”—it would have made such a point of it! So, delicate as Mr. Lacey, she announced after a while that she had changed her mind, and was going to call her pug Brownie, after all.
Mr. Lacey liked everybody so much, he couldn’t believe that anyone didn’t like him. But Victor didn’t like him in spite of pennies, in spite of tricks with his fresh finely embroidered pocket handkerchiefs. He hated to be laughed at, and he knew that sooner or later Mr. Lacey would begin laughing.
“Well, sir!” cried Mr. Lacey, flinging a kind arm about the little boy’s stiff and unresponsive body. “You’re just the young gentleman I’ve been wanting to see. I have a question I want to ask you—let’s see if you can answer me this. When—do—young ladies—eat a musical instrument.”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know, Mr. ⸻,” Mamma prompted.
“I don’t know, Mr. Lacey.”
“You mean to say you don’t know when Miss Maggie, and Miss May, and Miss Lily, eat a musical instrument? A bright young gentleman like you? Oh, come! I don’t believe that, you know!”
“A flute?” ventured Victor uncertainly, and turned scarlet at Mr. Lacey’s peals of laughter.
“A flute! That’s good, upon my word! I must remember that one! No, my lad, I see I’ll have to tell you. When they have a pianoforte—a piano—for—tea!” And his laughter pealed again, while Victor’s serious face remained unchanged.
“Well, never say die! Maybe you can tell me this one, young Sir Sobersides! What is the difference between a postage stamp and a bad boy?”
But Victor couldn’t tell him that, either.
Mr. Lacey wasn’t just a joker. No, indeed! He could talk about all sorts of deep subjects. He had read Mr. Darwin’s “Origin of Species” and his new book, “The Descent of Man”—well, at least, not exactly read them, but he had glanced through them, and knew what they were all about. Mamma, of course, was horrified at the very idea (her idea) of Darwinism. She wasn’t descended from monkeys! And what about the Bible? But Mr. Lacey, leaning back with his fingertips pressed together and a neat boot wagging, said there might be something in it—he didn’t say there was, mind you, but there might be. Mamma was almost in tears before she could persuade him to say that he himself didn’t believe a word of it.
The snowy twilight deepened, and the room was dark except for the firelight. The bunches of holly over the oil paintings of “The First Babe,” and “The Rendezvous,” of the cats and kittens with pink satin bows, and of the Italian peasants who seemed to spend all their time at fountains, melted into the gloomy background of the parlor paper, dark grey-green with shadowy vegetation and tendrils and swirls of gold. It was the time that they always lit the wax candles on the Christmas tree, and yet here was Mamma lying back in her chair with Brownie in her lap, just as if it were any ordinary day and she had nothing in the world to do but listen to Mr. Lacey complain because ladies were getting so mannish.
“Neckties, wristbands, shirt-collars and shirtfronts—upon my word, my sister Em had on a waistcoat this morning I thought was my own, except that it was satin. You may call me old-fashioned—”
“Oh, no, indeed, Mr. Lacey!”
“But I must say I like Lovely Woman to be womanly! All this agitation for Women’s Rights—”
“Dreadful!” breathed Mamma.
“To my way of thinking,” said Mr. Lacey, gazing earnestly and admiringly at Mamma, “Woman’s Right is the right to reign supreme in the heart and home of mere man—”
Oh, why didn’t he go home, so that they could light the candles? Victor could hardly stand it. He tried to comfort himself by ringing the little silver bell, but he couldn’t hear it through Mr. Lacey’s voice.
X
It was so hot that to breathe was like putting your head under a towel and over the teakettle. The air quivered, the hens lay in the shade, now and then uttering a languid kraw-aw-k, or following with sleepy eyes the flight of a butterfly it was too much trouble to make a try for. Mamma went upstairs after lunch, and got out of her corsets and into a muslin dressing-sacque, but then instead of lying down she took up Mr. Lacey’s note and reread it, pleased, confused, embarrassed, pushed it out of sight behind the box that held her evening hair, and then bent to read a sentence just once again, with reluctant pleasure.
He was coming to tea this evening. He had come to tea ever so many evenings, but this evening would be different, for his heart, the note said, would no longer allow him to keep silence.
And what did
