The Open Question: A Tale of Two TemperamentsRobins, Elizabeth
General
The Open Question: A Tale of Two Temperaments
Robins, Elizabeth
Fiction
The servant didn't answer. She and the strange man went by. As Val was
in the act of following, her grandmother appeared. She looked at Val a
moment, and then called the nurse in a whisper: "Put that child to bed."
To-morrow was the funeral. She should go, she had said.
"No, certainly not," said her grandmother; and Val set her firm little
mouth.
After breakfast the next morning, her father went into the room where
the baby was, and stayed a long time. The doctor was with her mother.
The doctor was a rude man, with a long yellow-white beard; he had spoken
as sternly as if he'd been one's grandmother when Val had said she
_would_ see her mother. She lingered now by the "best" room door. Would
she hear her father crying again? She hoped she would. There was
something so horribly exciting in it; it made her feel as if she should
die, and yet she listened eagerly to find out if he were doing it again.
No sound. He came out after a long, long while, and kissed her; his face
was wet.
"Run to your nurse, my dear," he said.
She didn't tell him Nanna had been sent out. He smoothed her hair, and
then went into her mother's room.
She was thinking a great deal about the baby. Nanna had been telling her
more about heaven. The nurse hadn't liked it when the child had asked
leading questions about the grave. But Nanna herself had said dozens of
times before, "I've buried me husband and three childer." What a curious
idea to put people in the dirty, black ground! And the baby! It must be
very bad for his pretty white clothes. How awful to have earth on one's
face, all over the ears and mouth! She choked a little. But one wouldn't
feel it, of course; the real baby was in heaven. He would have
everything there. "Yellow balls, too?" she had asked Nanna.
"He won't want the likes of that," the nurse had said. Nanna was very
stupid; as if the baby had ever wanted anything in his life so much as
that yellow ball! Conscience pricked cruelly. She _had_ been selfish and
horrid to the poor baby. She fell a-crying. Very likely they didn't have
yellow balls in heaven, and wouldn't know how much the baby loved them,
and he mightn't like to ask; besides, the poor baby talked such a queer
language, strangers never understood him. A sudden inspiration. It was
rather confusing about the real baby in heaven, and the real baby in the
"best" room. Wouldn't it be better to be on the safe side? Anyhow, there
was that business about Gabriel and the Last Trump and the Resurrection.
They had talked about that in church, and Nanna and mother had said it
was true. The dead would surely rise; the baby in the "best" room there
would one day come alive. It looked as if there'd be two real babies in
the end; but never mind. She flew up-stairs, rummaged the cupboard in
the nursery, and came flying down with something wrapped in her apron.
The doctor was in the lower hall talking to her father; she peeped at
them through the balusters, then softly on to the "best" room.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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