The soup-spoon journeying in Joel's direction tilted dangerously. Half the contents splashed upon his cheek and ran in a greasy dribble down his neck. The remainder distributed itself impartially in the vicinity of his mouth, a few tantalizing drops finding their way between his parted lips.

"Land alive!" Mary made a horrified forward rush. "You're a-drowning Mr. Dale. And look at you, wasting that nice soup, too."

Joel frowned and Mary drew back abashed, quailing before his disapproving glance.

"I guess if I was being drowned I'd have the sense to mention it. And n.o.body's going to the poor-house because a little soup gets spilled.

Some of the professions are pretty crowded, Mary, but there's one where there's room at the top and at the bottom, too, and that's the one of minding your own business."

Poor Mary blushed till her proximity to things inflammable would have awakened justifiable fears of a conflagration. Joel gave his attention to his self-appointed nurse. "Steady now! Better take a little less to start with. That's right. Now steer her straight."

The second spoonful reached its destination without serious accident.

Celia watched her patient as he swallowed and forgot the role she had a.s.signed herself.

"Is it good, Uncle Joel?"

"Uhuh! Pretty fair." Joel felt for his handkerchief and wiped the moist corner of his mouth.

"I'm going to taste it." Celia tilted the spoon to her own lips and sipped with appreciation. "Uncle Joel," she said thoughtfully, "if you're afraid this'll spoil your appet.i.te for supper, I'll eat it."

Again Joel chuckled. This made the third time in swift succession, and practise was giving him surprising facility. But unwarned by past experience, Mary put in her word. "Poor Mr. Dale hasn't eaten scarcely a mouthful to-day, and here you've had bread and jelly since dinner."

Joel's unaccustomed smile was at once obscured. "Mary, a considerable spell back a wise man said, 'Every fool will be meddling.' If you aren't familiar with the author, Mary, it would pay you to read him."

Again he gave his attention to Celia. "We'll share this, turn and turn about," he compromised. "First you have a spoonful and then me."

Mary withdrew unheeded. Though tremendously in awe of the impecunious and futile Joel, Mary felt no sense of diffidence where the efficient Persis was concerned, and at once went to find her. But Persis, who sat in one of her new bay-windows, the baby on her knee, was entertaining Mrs. West, while her benignantly maternal eyes watched three children playing outside.

"I declare you could have knocked me down with a feather, Persis, when I heard it," Mrs. West declared, her portliness rendering the figure of speech extremely impressive. "I wouldn't have thought queer of one or even two, but a whole family."

"A family's what I've always wanted," Persis returned with the cheerfulness of a woman whose life-long dream has come true. "And if I could have found enough of the sort I was after, I'm not sure I'd have stopped short of a round dozen."

"It's a responsibility," sighed Mrs. West "They're kind of like playthings to you now. You'll feel it later."

Persis looked at her with kind eyes. "I haven't added any new responsibility in taking these children, Mis' West. It was there just as soon as the money and leisure came to me, and I've made a start toward meeting it, that's all. We don't make our responsibilities; we just wake up to 'em."

"I must say you take to it like a duck to water," acknowledged Mrs.

West in conciliatory accents. "Some women are just as unhandy with a baby as a man. Sophia Warren's one. Once or twice I've seen her holding that Newell baby that lives next door, and she looked as stiff and scared as if she was setting for her photograph."

She leaned forward to watch the frolicsome children from the window.

"They're real nice-looking, Persis, I will say that. One, two, three and the baby's four. Somebody said five."

With a start Persis recalled the suspicious peace which for some time past had pervaded the establishment. "There's another," she said, "too little for school. Mary! Mary, do you know where Celia is?"

Mary approached. Her consciousness of being a bearer of important tidings communicated itself in some indefinable fashion to the other women. They looked up, alert on the instant.

"Celia's setting up in Mr. Joel's room." Mary gave her great news deliberately as if to enjoy the full flavor.

Persis started to her feet. Mrs. West raised her hands with an eloquent gesture.

"Has he got one of his bad spells?" she demanded. "And that child in his room. Well, fools rush--"

"She's playing he's her little boy," explained Mary, making the most of the sensation of being an actor in a real drama. "She fed him his soup and slopped him, but he took me up sharp when I tried to stop her. He acts as if she's got him clean bewitched."

"Well!" exclaimed Mrs. West, as Persis looked at her dumbly. "I never expected to live to see that Scripture fulfilled. The wolf and lamb lying down together and a weaned child in a c.o.c.katrice's den."

"Are you sure he wasn't angry?" asked Persis, still a little pale and doubtful.

Mary bridled.

"Go and see for yourself, Miss Dale, if you don't believe me. When I tried to stop her eating a good half of that broth, and chicken as high as 'tis, he the same as called me a fool for meddling. But you'd better go up-stairs. You won't be satisfied till you've heard for yourself."

In that Mary spoke truly. Her story was too incredible to be accepted without investigation. Persis' incredulity did not desert her till half-way up the stairs she was met by a child's voice, fond and confident.

"Uncle Joel, ain't G.o.d cruel to make some dogs without tails?"

And then as her brother's unfamiliar laugh reached her ears, Persis turned and went softly down the stairs.

CHAPTER XVII

ENID

If Persis Dale's extraordinary action in adopting a family _en ma.s.se_ had stirred Clematis from center to circ.u.mference, that agitation was trivial in comparison with the flutter produced by Joel's capitulation.

Mrs. West, backed up by Mary, told the news to auditors frankly incredulous who yet were sufficiently impressed by her sincerity to resolve on looking into the thing for themselves. Consequently the Dale homestead became a magnet for the curious, and many a skeptic came and went away convinced that the day of miracles had returned.

As a matter of fact Joel's surrender was in accord with the most elemental of psychological laws. With the characteristic caprice of her s.e.x in matters of the heart, Celia had taken a violent fancy to this pale-blooded hypochondriac, and made no secret of the fact that she regarded him as her especial property. Nothing is so flattering to the vanity as the preference of a child, that naive, spontaneous affection to which it is impossible to impute mercenary motives. And Joel had responded by becoming Celia's abject slave. He ignored the other children for the most part, seldom betraying, unless perhaps by an impatient gesture or a frown, that he was aware of their existence.

But his eyes were always on Celia, and when she spoke, he listened.

As was to be expected, that morsel of femininity improved every opportunity to parade her conquest. She took Joel to walk, holding tightly to his hand and entertaining him with an outpouring of those quaint fancies which have been the heritage of childhood from the beginning and yet always seem to the older generation so marvelously new. She inveigled him into playing whatever role she a.s.signed in fantastic dramas of her own creation. He was Celia's father or her little boy as the whim took her, the wolf which devoured Red Riding Hood's grandmother, or the hapless old lady herself, attacked ruthlessly by Celia as wolf. Crawling on all fours he played elephant, or with the handle of a basket between his teeth, he submitted to be patted on the head and addressed as Towser. Persis looked on with a wonder that never lost its poignancy. That the self-centered Joel should succ.u.mb to the innocent spell of childhood had never entered her calculations, and she reproached herself that she had so little understood him.

The comments of Persis' acquaintances were characteristic. Mrs. West, on the occasion of a second call, hinted her anxiety regarding the future of the impromptu family. "When you pick children up that way, you can't tell how they're going to turn out."

"And when you bring 'em into the world," remarked Persis dryly, "and rear 'em yourself and never let 'em out of your sight when you can help it, you don't know how they're going to turn out either." There was in her manner an ingenious suggestion of having in mind the recent heart-broken confidences of Thad's mother, and Etta West blushed hotly and changed the subject.

Mrs. Robert Hornblower looked upon the acquisition as practical rebellion against the decrees of Providence. In Persis' presence, she said little, having a sincere respect for her ex-dressmaker's gift of repartee. But to Mr. Hornblower, she expressed herself in no uncertain terms.

"If it's the Lord's will for a woman to raise a family, it stands to reason He'll send her a husband. This snapping your fingers in the face of the Almighty and gathering up children from here and there and anywhere, looks downright impious."

"Seems to me," began Mr. Hornblower in mild expostulation, "that Persis Dale--"

"Yes, I know, Robert," interrupted the submissive wife. "I feel just as you do. It's always been Persis Dale's greatest fault to imagine that she's a law unto herself. But this time she's overstepped the mark."

"Those children are orphans," exclaimed Mr. Hornblower, his complexion becoming apoplectic. "And if--"

In another instant he would have spoken his mind. Only by raising her voice so his next words became inaudible, did his wife avoid that catastrophe.

"I don't wonder you're shocked, Robert," said Mrs. Hornblower, "to think of her bringing into Clematis children of n.o.body knows who, to grow up with our own boys and girls and as like as not lead 'em astray.