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desperate flirtation with a young man in the habiliments of the fifteenth century, while across the background a huddle of dogs pursued a mammoth deer. Mathematically beneath the lamp stood a table covered with a red-figured spread. On the table was a glass bell, underneath which were wax flowers and a poorly-stuffed robin. In one angle of the room austerely huddled a three-cornered "whatnot" of four shelves. Two china pugs and a statuette of a simpering pair of children under a massive umbrella adorned this article of furniture. On the wall ticked an old-fashioned square wooden clock. The floor was concealed by a rag carpet. So much for the East. The West contributed brilliant green copper ore, flaky white tin ore, glittering white quartz ore, shining pyrites, and one or two businesslike specimens of oxygenated quartz, all of which occupied points of exhibit on the "whatnot." Over the carpet were spread a deer skin, and a rug made from the hide of a timber wolf. Bennington found all this interesting but depressing. He was glad when Mrs. Lawton returned and took up her voluble discourse.
In the midst of a dissertation on the relation of corn meal to eggs the door opened, and Mr. Lawton sidled in.
"Oh, here y' are at last!" observed his spouse scornfully, and rattled on. Lawton nodded awkwardly, and perched himself on the edge of a chair. He had assumed an ill-fitting suit of store clothes, in which he unaccustomedly writhed, and evidently, to judge from the sleekness of his hair, had recently plunged his head in a pail of water. He said nothing, but whenever Mrs. Lawton was not looking he winked elaborately and solemnly at Bennington as though to imply that circumstances alone prevented any more open show of cordiality. At last, catching the young man's eye at a more than usually propitious moment, he went through the pantomime of opening a bottle, then furtively arose and disappeared. Mrs. Lawton, remembering her cakes, ran out. Bennington was left alone again. He had not spoken six words.
The door slowly opened, and another member of the family sidled in. Bennington owned a helpless feeling that this was a sort of show, and that these various actors in it were
parading their entrances and their exits before him. Or that he himself were the object of inspection on whom the others were satisfying their own curiosity.
The newcomer was a child, a little girl about eight or ten years old. Bennington liked children as a usual thing. No one on earth could have become possessed in this one's favour. She was a creature of regular but mean features, extreme gravity, and evidently of an inquiring disposition. On seeing her for the first time, one sophisticated would have expected a deluge of questions. Bennington did. But she merely stood and stared without winking.
"Hullo, little girl!" Bennington greeted her uneasily.
The creature only stared the harder.
"My doll's name is Garnet M-a-ay," she observed suddenly, with a long-drawn nasal accent.
After this interesting bit of information another silence fell.
"What is your name, little girl?" Bennington asked desperately at last.
"Maude," remarked the phenomenon briefly.
This statement she delivered in that whining tone which the extremely self-conscious infant imagines to indicate playful childishness. She approached.
"D' you want t' see my picters?" she whimpered confidingly.
Bennington expressed his delight.
For seven geological ages did he gaze upon cheap and horrible woodcuts of gentlemen in fashionable raiment trying to lean against conspicuously inadequate rustic gates; equally fashionable ladies, with flat chests, and rat's nest hair; and animals whose attitudes denoted playful sportiveness of disposition. Each of these pictures was explained in
minute detail. Bennington's distress became apathy. Mrs. Lawton returned from the cakes presently, yet her voice seemed to break in on the duration of centuries.
"Now, Maude!" she exclaimed, with a proper maternal pride, "you mustn't be botherin' the gentleman." She paused to receive the expected disclaimer. It was made, albeit a little weakly. "Maude is very good with her Book," she explained. "Miss Brown, that's the school teacher that comes over from Hill Town summers, she says Maude reads a sight better than lots as is two or three years older. Now how old would you think she was, Mr. de Laney?"