CHAPTER X

ST. PATRICK'S DAY AND THE FIRST OF APRIL

The Misses Clark had borrowed Elisabeth for the afternoon. It was
becoming a custom with them, and as Miss Merriam insisted that her
little charge should have her naps out of doors with unbroken
regularity, the old ladies found themselves almost every day sitting,
rug-enwrapped, on Mrs. Smith's veranda or their own while the baby dozed
luxuriously in her carriage. Elisabeth grew pink in the fresh air and if
her self-appointed attendants did not do likewise they at least found
themselves benefiting by the unaccustomed treatment.

In early March a brother came to visit them. He was a dignified elderly
man, "just like the sisters before Elisabeth made them human," Roger
declared, "except that he has whiskers a foot long." At first he paid no
attention to the child, though the story of its escape from Belgium
interested him. But no one resisted Elisabeth long and it was not many
days before Mr. Clark was holding his book with one hand and playing
ball with the other.

On this particular day Mrs. Smith and Miss Merriam had both needed to go
to New York, and the Misses Clark had seized the opportunity to have an
unusually long call from Ayleesabet. They had sat on their veranda with
her while she napped; but when she came in, fresh and wide awake, their
older eyes were growing sleepy from the cold and they went upstairs for
forty winks, leaving their nursling in charge of their brother.

Ayleesabet was goodness itself. She sat on the floor and rolled a ball
to her elderly playmate, chuckling when it struck the edge of a rug and
went out of its course so that he had to plunge after it. She walked
around the edge of the same rug, evidently regarding it as an island to
be explored, Crusoe fashion. Her explorations were thorough. If she had
been old enough to know what mines were one would have thought that she
was playing miner, for she lay on her back, pushed up the rug and rolled
under it.

"Upon my word," ejaculated Mr. Clark, adjusting his spectacles and
examining the hump made by the baby's round little Belgian body. "Upon
my word, that doesn't seem the thing for her to do."

But Elisabeth seemed entirely contented and made no response to the old
gentleman's cluckings and other blandishments.

"Come out," he whispered in beguiling tones. "Come out and play."

No answer.

"Come and play horsey. Don't you want to climb up? That's it. Up she
goes! Steady now.