Keineth waited what seemed to her hours; then retraced her steps to the house and walked very quietly into the hall. Daddy heard the door close behind her and called to her from the study. He was sitting at his desk, tapping the pad before him with the point of a pencil Aunt Josephine sat on the old horse-hair sofa, looking very excited, and Tante, a pile of books still clasped in her arm and a smudge of dust across her straight features, stood near the window.
"I think it's high time you used a little sense in the way you bring up that child, John. You'll ruin her!"
Keineth's father smiled across at Keineth as much as to say: "Never mind, dear," but he listened gravely as his sister went on:
"I think it's the best thing that could happen--Madame Henri going away and you called on this trip--"
"Wait a moment, Josephine; Keineth does not know yet--"
"Daddy!" cried the child, running to him.
"Just a moment, dear," he whispered, as he drew her between his knees and laid his cheek against her hair.
Aunt Josephine looked very much in earnest. Keineth could not remember a time when she had seemed more concerned over hers and Daddy's welfare!
"Now I can take Keineth with me until July. Then when I go on that yachting cruise she can go to some camp in the mountains--there are ever so many good ones. And next fall I can put her into a school. She's too old to go on living as you are living."
Now the world had turned upside down! Keineth pressed suddenly close to her father. He tightened the clasp of her arm.
"Wait a moment, sister. We have two or three days to talk this over. I must get Madame Henri safely started and then Keineth and I will make our plans." As he said this he squeezed the child's hand. "You're awfully good to offer to take my little girl and I know you'd try your best to make her happy." He stepped toward the door. Aunt Josephine rose, too.
"Well, you'd better follow my advice," she said crisply. She almost always concluded their interviews in this manner when they had to do with Daddy's household. This time she stopped on her way to the door to place her hands on Keineth's shoulders and let her eyes sweep Keineth's little face.
"I'd make an up-to-date child of her, John. She's got her mother's eyes but the Randolph features. With a little grooming she'd make a beauty. And the first thing I'd do would be to put a decent frock on her!"
Keineth knew that Aunt Josephine meant to be kind but, hurt at her criticism, she drew away from her aunt's clasp. As her aunt and father went out she looked down wonderingly at the simple blue serge she wore. Tante had always had her dresses made at a little shop on lower Fifth Avenue and Keineth had always thought them very nice.
Madame Henri, muttering to herself, went out of the room. Keineth stood very still until her father came back. He shut the door and went to his desk. She ran to him and hid her face on his shoulder.
"Daddy--are you--going away?"
"Yes, child--I must."
"For all summer? For all winter?"
"Yes, dear. I think it may be a year."
"Daddy--" began Keineth, then stopped short to hide her face. Father must not see her cry!
"I'll make a little picture for you, dear. This country of ours is like a great big house. It's like all the homes all over the United States put into one. And it must be tended just as we'd tend our own little home--it must be kept in repair. It must be kept clean and have pretty spots, just like Madame Henri's geraniums! And it must be guarded, too, from those who would break in and steal what belongs in the home--or tear it down and make a ruin of it! And it must know its neighbors and work with them to keep everything peaceful and tidy about the whole street of nations! Don't you remember how I had to argue with Signora Ferocci to make her clean up her back alley?"
They both laughed together over the recollection of their efforts to persuade their next-door neighbor of the joys of cleanliness!
"Every person, big and small, should do his part toward the home-keeping of this big land of ours. And I have been asked to do a service. Soldiers can't do it all, my dear--only a very small part of it! There are a great many others--men like myself--who are going out over the world to work for the Stars and Stripes. And when I have been asked to go on a mission for our country that is very important, even though it takes me very far and keeps me away a very long time, I am sure my loyal little American girl will be the first to bid me go!"
Keineth's eyes were quite dry now and were very bright. She sat up very straight. She had entirely forgotten herself.
"Will you wear a uniform, Daddy?"
"Oh, dear me, no--my work is not of that sort, In fact, I must go about in the quietest manner possible. I cannot even tell my little girl where I am going."
"You mean it's a secret?" the child cried.
"Yes, until I return. I must ask you to tell no one that I have gone for the government. We may fail--the newspapers must not know yet. Everyone must think I am simply travelling."
Keineth was silent and perplexed. It did not occur to her to ask her father why she could not go with him. He had often gone away before and she had always stayed in the old house with Tante. But it had never been for a whole year!
Suddenly she cried out: "I'll be very brave, but--oh, Daddy!"
He laughed, although he held her very close.
"Do you think, my dear, I would go away until I felt very certain that you were going to be happy? I'm not sure how well you'd like it at Aunt Josephine's--it would be very different. Still--you'd have that French maid of hers for a nurse and go out with her and Fido for his walk and ride in the yellow motor and have all kinds of frilled dresses and feathered hats--" He was imitating Aunt Josephine's voice in a very funny manner that made Keineth laugh.
Keineth thought very quickly of all the things she loved to do that she knew Aunt Josephine would not allow her to do, but she did not want to speak of them, for it might make her Daddy unhappy. Her father went on, more seriously:
"But I have another plan. I will tell you about It and you may choose between that and Aunt Josephine's." (Keineth suddenly felt very grown up.) "Coming up from Washington I ran into Mr. William Lee, an old friend of mine--a man I knew in college. I used to think the world of him. I hadn't seen him for fifteen years! He lives in the western part of the state. I knew Mrs. Lee, too,--she was a friend of your mother's and they were very fond of one another. We talked for a long time over old times. He showed me kodak pictures of his children--he has four. Do you know what I thought when I looked at them?"
"What, Daddy?"
"That I was cheating my little girl out of a great deal that every child has a right to--the pure joy of giving. When I looked at those youngsters of his--husky, bare-armed, round-cheeked children, I knew they were getting a lot of happiness you'd never know in this little corner of ours--the kind of happiness you can only have when you are young." Keineth was puzzled. "What do you mean, Daddy?"
"Oh, running, jumping, swimming--tennis--baseball! Why, the knowing other children well--even the quarrelling," he stopped, frowning. "I had it all when I was little and here I am cheating you. Aunt Josephine is right when she says I'm not fair to you--but I don't think you'd get it even with her!"
"But I don't know anything about all those things, Daddy."
"That's just it! You can learn, though. I told Mr. Lee that I had to go away, and about you, and he asked me if I wouldn't let you go to them for the year. They have a summer home on the shore of Lake Erie and almost live out-of-doors. I said no at first--it seemed too much to ask of them, but he persisted and wouldn't take no for an answer. He is coming here to-night to talk it over. I think now--it might be the thing to do. Mrs. Lee loved your mother very, very dearly, and I know would be very good to you."
He gently lifted her down from off his knee, which meant that he had work to do and that Keineth must leave the room. She sought out Tante upstairs. The good woman had closed her last box and was dressed ready to start on her long trip, although the boat would not leave until the next day. She was knitting, so Keineth took a book and sat near the window pretending to read. Her eyes wandered off the page and her poor little mind was busy at work trying to decide which she would dislike the least--living with Aunt Josephine and walking with Fido and the French maid and going to a strange camp and a strange school, or going off to a strange place and living among strange people and playing strange games! She wanted dreadfully to cry, but Tante was so quiet and so miserable, and Daddy was so serious that she could not add in any way to what seemed to trouble them.
So--although Francesca, the little Italian singer, was skipping rope on the pavement below the window, and a robin was calling lustily to its mate in a nearby horse-chestnut tree, and a vender was peddling his wares down the street in a voice that sounded like a slow-pealing bell, poor Keineth felt as if she could never be really happy again! That night Daddy and Keineth went uptown for dinner. In one of the hotels they met Mr. Lee. Keineth's heart was pounding with dread beneath her neat serge dress and she was almost afraid to look at the man. But when he took her hand in his and spoke in a kindly voice, she ventured a timid glance and saw a big man, taller and heavier than her father, with a jolly smile and eyes that laughed from under their shaggy eyebrows. Then she felt that she liked him--and the more because he had such an affectionate way of laying his hand on her father's shoulder.
While they talked together Mr. Lee watched her very closely. Once he said to her father:
"My wife will love the little girl--she is so like her mother!" There had been a long silence then, and Keineth had seen the look in her father's eyes that meant his thoughts were back in the past. Later Mr. Lee had added: "Why, John--you won't know the child after a summer with us--those cheeks will all be roses and her little body plump. And how the kiddies will love her!"
Keineth had been shown the kodak pictures and had studied them closely. The very big girl was Barbara, who was seventeen. The boy was Billy, aged fourteen. Peggy was Keineth's age--twelve, and the little one, Alice, was eight. They all wore middy blouses in the picture and Peggy and Alice were barefooted. Keineth thought, as she looked at their laughing faces, that they were very unlike any children she had ever seen anywhere.
They took Mr. Lee to their home. Keineth played on the piano for them--not her own fairy things, but a simple little piece she had learned with much precision from Madame Henri. Then she and Tante went upstairs. Daddy had whispered to her as she kissed him good-night:
"You must decide yourself, dear!"
Keineth had thought that when she was quite alone in her bedroom she would cry, for then it would disturb no one and she really had a great deal to cry about. But Madame Henri lingered a long time by her bed, standing close to it with a very white face. Finally she knelt beside it and laid her cheek against Keineth's hands. Keineth felt hot tears which surprised her, for she did not know that Tante knew how to cry. Then Tante began to pray--a queer sort of prayer, all broken: "Oh, God, oh, God, keep this little girl safe from the things that hurt! Keep all the little ones! Why should they suffer? Where is your mercy?" Then she said a great deal in French so fast that Keineth could not understand her and finally, sobbing violently, she rushed out of the room, leaving Keineth very disturbed. She thought that poor Tante must love her very much and she supposed the prayer was for the little children in Europe who were starving, as well as for her--Keineth Randolph! Madame Henri's good heart so moved her that she jumped out of bed to kneel beside it and add what she had forgotten in her concern over herself!
"God bless dear, dear Tante and keep her safe!"
Then, feeling very excited, Keineth went to sleep without crying and dreamed of running barefooted with Peggy through fields all white with daisies, while in the distance at a fence like the rail fences in pictures, stood Aunt Josephine's awful French maid with Fido under her arm, screaming at her in French.
So vivid seemed the dream that it awakened Keineth. She listened for a moment. She could hear the click of her father's typewriter. She pressed the button that lighted her bed lamp, found her slippers and stole noiselessly downstairs. Never in her whole life had she disturbed her Daddy when he was writing, but now she did not even rap--she pushed the door open and ran to him.
"Daddy, Daddy--" she cried as though still pursued by the screaming French maid. "Please--I'd rather go to the Lee's!"
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