Marm Lisa [37]
one whether it exists or not, and one has to allow it, and respond to it at least in some perfunctory fashion. More than once, as Mr. Man sat silently near the circle, the chubby Baker baby would fall over his feet, and he would involuntarily stoop to pick her up, straighten her dress, and soothe her woe. There was no hearty pleasure in his service even now. Nobody was certain that he felt any pleasure at all. His helpfulness was not spontaneous; it seemed a kind of reflex action, a survival of some former state of mind or heart; for he did his favours in a dream, nor heard any thanks: yet the elixir was working in his veins.
'He is dreadfully in the way,' grumbled Edith; 'he is more ever- present than my ardent Russian.'
'So long as he insists on coming, let us make him supply the paternal element,' suggested Rhoda. 'It may be a degrading confession, but we could afford to part with several women here if we could only secure a really fatherly man. The Solitary cannot indulge in any day-dreams or trances, if we accept him as the patriarch of the institution.'
Whereupon they boldly asked him, on his subsequent visits, to go upon errands, and open barrels of apples, and order intoxicated gentlemen off the steps, and mend locks and window-fastenings, and sharpen lead-pencils, and put on coal, and tell the lady in the rear that her parrot interfered with their morning prayers by shrieking the hymns in impossible keys. He accepted these tasks without protest, and performed them conscientiously, save in the parrot difficulty, in which case he gave one look at the lady, and fled without opening the subject.
It could not be said that he appeared more cheerful, the sole sign of any increased exhilaration of spirits being the occasional straightening of his cravat and the smoothing of his hair-- refinements of toilet that had heretofore been much neglected, though he always looked unmistakably the gentleman.
He seemed more attracted by Lisa than by any of the smaller children; but that may have been because Mary had told him her story, thinking that other people's stories were a useful sort of thing to tell people who had possible stories of their own.
Lisa was now developing a curious and unexpected facility and talent in the musical games. She played the tambourine, the triangle, the drum, as nobody else could, and in accompanying the marches she invented all sorts of unusual beats and accents. It grew to be the natural thing to give her difficult parts in the little dramas of child life: the cock that crowed in the morn to wake the sleeping birds and babies, the mother-bird in the nest, the spreading willow- tree in the pond where the frogs congregated,--these roles she delighted in and played with all her soul.
It would have been laughable, had it not been pathetic, to watch her drag Mr. Man into the games, and to see him succumb to her persuasions with his face hanging out flaming signals of embarrassment. In the 'Carrier Doves' the little pigeons flew with an imaginary letter to him, and this meant that he was to stand and read it aloud, as Mary and Edith had done before him.
'It seems to be a letter from a child,' he faltered, and then began stammeringly, '"My dear Mr. Man"'--there was a sudden stop. That there was a letter in his mind nobody could doubt, but he was too greatly moved to read it. Rhoda quickly reached out her hand for the paper, covering his discomfiture by exclaiming, 'The pigeons have brought Mr. Man a letter from some children in his fatherland! Yes' (reading), 'they hope that we will be good to him, because he is far away from home, and they send their love to all Mistress Mary's children. Wasn't it pretty of the doves to remember that Mr. Man is a stranger here?'
The Solitary appeared for the last time a week before Thanksgiving Day, and he opened the door on a scene of jollity that warmed him to the heart.
In the middle of the floor was a mimic boat, crowded from stem to stern with little Pilgrim fathers and mothers trying to land on Plymouth Rock, in a high
'He is dreadfully in the way,' grumbled Edith; 'he is more ever- present than my ardent Russian.'
'So long as he insists on coming, let us make him supply the paternal element,' suggested Rhoda. 'It may be a degrading confession, but we could afford to part with several women here if we could only secure a really fatherly man. The Solitary cannot indulge in any day-dreams or trances, if we accept him as the patriarch of the institution.'
Whereupon they boldly asked him, on his subsequent visits, to go upon errands, and open barrels of apples, and order intoxicated gentlemen off the steps, and mend locks and window-fastenings, and sharpen lead-pencils, and put on coal, and tell the lady in the rear that her parrot interfered with their morning prayers by shrieking the hymns in impossible keys. He accepted these tasks without protest, and performed them conscientiously, save in the parrot difficulty, in which case he gave one look at the lady, and fled without opening the subject.
It could not be said that he appeared more cheerful, the sole sign of any increased exhilaration of spirits being the occasional straightening of his cravat and the smoothing of his hair-- refinements of toilet that had heretofore been much neglected, though he always looked unmistakably the gentleman.
He seemed more attracted by Lisa than by any of the smaller children; but that may have been because Mary had told him her story, thinking that other people's stories were a useful sort of thing to tell people who had possible stories of their own.
Lisa was now developing a curious and unexpected facility and talent in the musical games. She played the tambourine, the triangle, the drum, as nobody else could, and in accompanying the marches she invented all sorts of unusual beats and accents. It grew to be the natural thing to give her difficult parts in the little dramas of child life: the cock that crowed in the morn to wake the sleeping birds and babies, the mother-bird in the nest, the spreading willow- tree in the pond where the frogs congregated,--these roles she delighted in and played with all her soul.
It would have been laughable, had it not been pathetic, to watch her drag Mr. Man into the games, and to see him succumb to her persuasions with his face hanging out flaming signals of embarrassment. In the 'Carrier Doves' the little pigeons flew with an imaginary letter to him, and this meant that he was to stand and read it aloud, as Mary and Edith had done before him.
'It seems to be a letter from a child,' he faltered, and then began stammeringly, '"My dear Mr. Man"'--there was a sudden stop. That there was a letter in his mind nobody could doubt, but he was too greatly moved to read it. Rhoda quickly reached out her hand for the paper, covering his discomfiture by exclaiming, 'The pigeons have brought Mr. Man a letter from some children in his fatherland! Yes' (reading), 'they hope that we will be good to him, because he is far away from home, and they send their love to all Mistress Mary's children. Wasn't it pretty of the doves to remember that Mr. Man is a stranger here?'
The Solitary appeared for the last time a week before Thanksgiving Day, and he opened the door on a scene of jollity that warmed him to the heart.
In the middle of the floor was a mimic boat, crowded from stem to stern with little Pilgrim fathers and mothers trying to land on Plymouth Rock, in a high