The Daughter of the Storage: And Other Things in Prose and VerseHowells, William Dean
General
The Daughter of the Storage: And Other Things in Prose and Verse
Howells, William Dean
Poetry; Short stories
"Oh no, he isn't, dear little soul," Mrs. Forsyth said, leaving her
chair and going up to the two children. She took the boy's hand in
hers. "What a kind boy! But you know my little girl mustn't take all
your playthings. If you'll give her _one_ she'll give _you_ one, and
that will be enough. You can both play with them all for the present."
She referred her suggestion to the boy's mother, and the two ladies
met at the invisible line dividing the five-dollar room from the
twenty-dollar room.
"Oh yes, indeed," the Mid-Westerner said, willing to meet the
New-Yorker half-way. "You're taking things out, I see. I hardly know
which is the worst: taking out or putting in."
"Well, we are just completing the experience," Mrs. Forsyth said. "I
shall be able to say better how I feel in half an hour."
"You don't mean this is the first time you've stored? I suppose
_we've_ been in and out of storage twenty times. Not in this warehouse
exactly; we've never been here before."
"It seems very nice," Mrs. Forsyth suggested.
"They all do at the beginning. I suppose if we ever came to the end
they would seem nicer still. Mr. Bream's business is always taking him
away" (it appeared almost instantly that he was the international
inspector of a great insurance company's agencies in Europe and South
America), "and when I don't go with him it seems easier to break up
and go into a hotel than to go on housekeeping. I don't know that it
is, though," she questioned. "It's so hard to know what to do with the
child in a hotel."
"Yes, but he seems the sort that you could manage with anywhere," Mrs.
Forsyth agreed and disagreed.
His mother looked at him where he stood beaming upon Tata and again
joyfully awaiting some effect with her. But the child sat back upon
her small heels with her eyes fixed on the things in her trunk and
made no sign of having seen the heaps of his gifts.
The Forsyths had said to each other before this that their little girl
was a queer child, and now they were not so much ashamed of her
apparent selfishness or rude indifference as they thought they were.
They made a joke of it with the boy's mother, who said she did not
believe Tata was anything but shy. She said she often told Mr. Bream
that she did wish Peter--yes, that was his name; she didn't like it
much, but it was his grandfather's; was Tata a Christian name? Oh,
just a pet name! Well, it _was_ pretty--could be broken of _his_
ridiculous habit; most children--little boys, that was--held onto
their things so.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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