ble negative, Beulah.--She
once wrote a poem beginning: 'The rabbit doll, it is my own.' She
thinks that she has a frog-like expression of face, and that is why
Beulah doesn't like her better. She is perfectly willing to have her
adenoids cut out, if Beulah thinks it would improve her, but she
doesn't want to 'take anything,' when she has it done."

"You are a wonder, Gram," Gertrude said admiringly.

"Oh! I have made a mess of it, haven't I?" Beulah said. "Is she
homesick?"

"Yes, she's homesick," Peter said gravely, "but not for anything she's
left in Colhassett. David told you the story, didn't he?--She is
homesick for her own kind, for people she can really love, and she's
never found any of them. Her grandfather and grandmother are old and
decrepit. She feels a terrible responsibility for them, but she
doesn't love them, not really. She's too hungry to love anybody until
she finds the friends she can cling to--without compromise."

"An emotional aristocrat," Gertrude murmured. "It's the curse of
taste."

"Help! Help!" Jimmie cried, grimacing at Gertrude. "Didn't she have
any kids her own age to play with?"

"She had 'em, but she didn't have any time to play with them. You
forget she was supporting a family all the time, Jimmie."

"By jove, I'd like to forget it."

"She had one friend named Albertina Weston that she used to run around
with in school. Albertina also wrote poetry. They used to do poetic
'stunts' of one poem a day on some subject selected by Albertina. I
think Albertina was a snob. She candidly admitted to Eleanor that if
her clothes were more stylish, she would go round with her more.
Eleanor seemed to think that was perfectly natural."

"How do you do it, Peter?" Jimmie besought. "If I could get one
damsel, no matter how tender her years, to confide in me like that I'd
be happy for life. It's nothing to you with those eyes, and that
matinee forehead of yours; but I want 'em to weep down my neck, and I
can't make 'em do it."

"Wait till you grow up, Jimmie, and then see what happens," Gertrude
soothed him.

"Wait till it's your turn with our child," Margaret said. "In two
months more she's coming to you."

"Do I ever forget it for a minute?" Jimmie cried.

"The point of the whole business is," Peter continued, "that we've got
a human soul on our hands. We imported a kind of scientific plaything
to exercise our spiritual muscle on, and we've got a real specimen of
womanhood in embryo.