"I was a well, strong man when I left Vera Cruz," he said darkly. "I wish you luck, Miss Vail." He took one step and halted. "Do you believe in corporal punishment?"

"Mercy, no! It's a relic of barbarism. No one does, now!"

"You will," he said, earnestly, "you will! Corporal punishment?--My G.o.d,--_capital_!"

"Farewell, old camel," Dolores called, kindly, after his retreating figure. "Go with G.o.d!"

"Michael Daragh," I whispered, when we at last were packed into the taxi, "couldn't we stop at some school on the way home and leave her?"

"Not in those clothes, woman dear,--not with those animals."

"_Cuidado, Hombron!_" said my dewy-eyed dove. "If you seek to turn from me the heart of my virgin mother (she p.r.o.nounces it veergeen mawther), I will not let her marry with you, and you will be old sour face _soltero_, and she will dress the saints! But," she went on indulgently, "if you are good to me, I am good to you!

See,--I kiss up to G.o.d!"--and she wafted a heavily scented kiss toward the ceiling of the taxicab.

Desperately,

JANE.

CHAPTER XXI

_Wednesday._

Well, Sally, mia, life looks a bit more rosy! I've separated Dolores from her cigarette, from her furry coat of powder, from her athletic perfume, from her circus clothes, and to-day, in spite of her incredible size (the inches and pounds she has acquired in six months!) the years have fallen from her. In a slim, brown tricotine with a wide, untrimmed hat of silky brown straw her loveliness has come back, and with it my enthusiasm.

She is docile in the main, when not too violently opposed, and I feed my fancy on the joy and pride I shall have in her, when she has finished school, in five years.

She starts on Monday, a splendid, firm, well-disciplined school where they have sensible rules about not letting the pupils come home for weekends. The head-mistress was charmed with Dolores and Dolores has "kissed up to G.o.d" her resolve to be good.

I'm honestly ashamed of my panic over first impressions. She's really an angel.

JANE.

_Thursday._

She's really a demon.

J.

_New York City, June 29th._

DEAREST SALLY,

It's weeks since I've written you, but I'm a broken woman, old before my time. I may not look quite so forlorn as the geologist did, but I feel it.

Did I write something about the rosy but dim and distant date when Dolores would be "through school?" Well, it's come. She's through school. And school, I might mention in pa.s.sing, is through with her,--five of them, from Miss Trenchard's Spartan smartness to the gentle Spanish convent. She's a demon-baby. She's a cross between Carmen and Mary Maclane.

Of course the wedding has had to be postponed. Michael Daragh is angelic about it, and he hasn't been able to help me with Dolores as much as he would like because he's been engulfed with a new settlement house, and his dope fiend has been wobbling again, but our calendar is finished and accepted now, and a really nice girl is being really nice to him--liking him, trusting him, and M.D. is at peace about him.

Dolores came definitely home from the convent to-day with a clever note from the Mother Superior ... they feel that the child needs more s.p.a.ce ... freedom....

Good heavens, so do I! _Ay de mi_, that I ever saw Mexico! And yet, the demon-baby loves me, and I love her, but I also love Michael Daragh and would like exceedingly to marry him. My house is ready, my clothes are finished, and so--nearly--am I.

But I cannot go off on a honeymoon unless I leave her in safety.

Sarah, now that your mother is so improved, wouldn't you like to take a boarder? You could chain her to the baby-grand....

Distractedly,

THE VIRGIN MOTHER OF HER SOUL.

P.S. A friend, knowing of my plight, has just telephoned about a very fine New Thought school which will be glad to receive my ward. Well, they'll have some entirely new thoughts in that school which they've never had before!

J.

_July Sixth._

SALLY DARLING,

I jibber with joy! The best and most beautiful of all my leading men was sent by a kind Providence to take tea with me to-day and talk over the new play idea, and while he was here Dolores Tristeza arrived in state and a taxi from the N.T. school, along with her trunk and her temper and her temperament and Santa Catalina and Jose-Maria. Utterly ignoring him, she launched upon a monologue of her fancied wrongs, dramatizing every incident, impersonating every one from the Princ.i.p.al to the taxi driver. I'd seen her through so many of these Mad Scenes that it left me quite cold, but not so my actor-man. When she had finished, spitting (dryly but venomously) upon all schools, and flung herself out of the room, he sprang to his feet.

"Good gad, Jane Vail,--don't you know what you've got here? A young n.a.z.imova! An infant Kalich! Schools--nonsense! Teach her the A.B.C.'s--but don't touch that accent--and turn her loose on the stage!"

Sarah, he's right. It's the thing, the only thing, to do with her. I took her to see n.a.z.imova to-night, and she sat star-eyed and hardly breathing. When we came home I told her my new ideal for her and she wept with joy. She swears by the green tail of Santa Catalina and kisses up to G.o.d that she will never be wicked again, and she believes it, and so do I, for I've touched her imagination at last.

I've been trying to keep a Bird of Paradise in a chicken coop! I'll put her with the right people for training, and have her with me a great deal, and not try to muss up her poor little mind with mathematics.

She is lying sleepless and bright-eyed in her bed, and I must go in to her now, to soothe her off to the Poppy Fields with happy plans and prophesies.

_When_ are you coming?

JANE.

_July Eighth._

MY DEAR,

I float on a sea of rosy bliss. Randal's girl has almost promised to marry him, and he's a new man, and Dolores is a lamb, dreaming of the time she may begin her study for the stage, in the early fall.

We are to be married on the afternoon of the twenty-fourth, and take the night boat for Boston and thence to Maine, to Three Meadows. It was M.D. who sent me there by scolding me into realization of my grubbiness four years ago; I want to have my honeymoon there. The Deacon and "Angerleek" have a little house which they rent, and they are making it ready for us.

I'm afraid every one at home will think me quite mad to be married here instead of in my dear old house, but Sally, after all, my wedding belongs to this world, not to that. I shall be married here at Mrs. Hills' in her big old double parlors, the ugliness conquered with flowers, and I shall wear my traveling things--as the village paper would say--"the bride, attired in a modish going-away gown"--I know you'll wail for all the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, Sally dear,--the veil and the train and all the rest, but that sort of thing belongs to eighteen, not twenty-eight. I'm beyond the age of opera bouffe weddings,--I don't vision myself coming down a white-ribboned aisle with wobbly knees, covered with orange blossoms and gooseflesh! But--oh, Sally, the truth is that I would be married in a mackintosh or a bathing suit, I'm so dizzily, dazedly happy!

Dolores Tristeza, good as an angel out of a frieze, agrees to stay docilely with Emma Ellis at Hope House while we are away. She calls her "_Ella de la barba_" with reference to the small but determined little fringe on poor E.E.'s chin and I tremble--no, I don't! I'm not afraid of anything now. Everything is and will be perfect.