"My aunt Beulah wears her hair to high of her forrid.
"My aunt Margaret wears her hair to slic on the sides.
"My aunt Gertrude wears her hair just about right.
"My aunt Margaret is the best looking, and has the nicest way.
"My aunt Gertrude is the funniest. I never laugh at what she says, but
I have trouble not to. By thinking of Grandpa's rheumaticks I stop
myself just in time. Aunt Beulah means all right, and wants to do
right and have everybody else the same.
"Uncle David is not handsome, but good.
"Uncle Jimmie is not handsome, but his hair curls.
"Uncle Peter is the most handsome man that ere the sun shown on. That
is poetry. He has beautiful teeth, and I like him.
"Yesterday the Wordsworth Club--that's what Uncle Jimmie calls us
because he says we are seven--went to the Art Museum to edjucate me in
art.
"Aunt Beulah wanted to take me to one room and keep me there until I
asked to come out. Uncle Jimmie wanted to show me the statures. Uncle
David said I ought to begin with the Ming period and work down to Art
Newvoo. Aunts Gertrude and Margaret wanted to take me to the room of
the great masters. While they were talking Uncle Peter and I went to
see a picture that made me cry. I asked him who she was. He said that
wasn't the important thing, that the important thing was that one man
had nailed his dream. He didn't doubt that lots of other painters had,
but this one meant the most to him. When I cried he said, 'You're all
right, Baby. You know.' Then he reached down and kissed me."
* * * * *
As the month progressed, it seemed to Beulah that she was making
distinct progress with the child. Since the evening when Peter had won
Eleanor's confidence and explained her mental processes, her task had
been illumined for her. She belonged to that class of women in whom
maternity arouses late. She had not the facile sympathy which accepts
a relationship without the endorsement of the understanding, and she
was too young to have much toleration for that which was not perfectly
clear to her.
She had started in with high courage to demonstrate the value of a
sociological experiment. She hoped later, though these hopes she had
so far kept to herself, to write, or at least to collaborate with some
worthy educator, on a book which would serve as an exact guide to
other philanthropically inclined groups who might wish to follow the
example of cooperative adoption; but the first day of actual contact
with her problem had chilled her. She had put nothing down in her
note-book. She had made no scientific progress. There seemed to be no
intellectual response in the child.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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