Annie Kilburn Part 26

"I don't like it," she said.

"I know you don't. But you can say that it wasn't Putney who hoaxed Mrs.

Munger, but Dr. Morrell."

"Oh, you didn't either of you hoax her."

"Well, then, there's no harm done."

"I'm not so sure."

"And you won't give me any coffee?"

"Oh yes, I'll give you some _coffee_," said Annie, with a sigh of baffled scrupulosity that made them both laugh.

He broke out again after he had begun to drink his coffee.

"Well?" she demanded, from her own lapse into silence.

"Oh, nothing! Only Putney. He wants Brother Peck, as he calls him, to unite all the religious elements of Hatboro' in a church of his own, and send out missionaries to the heathen of South Hatboro' to preach a practical Christianity. He makes South Hatboro' stand for all that's worldly and depraved."

"Poor Ralph! Is that the way he talks?"

"Oh, not all the time. He talks a great many other ways."

"I wonder you can laugh."

"He's been very severe on Brother Peck for neglecting the discipline of his child. He says he ought to remember his duty to others, and save the community from having the child grow up into a capricious, wilful woman.

Putney was very hard upon your s.e.x, Miss Kilburn. He attributed nearly all the trouble in the world to women's wilfulness and caprice."

He looked across the table at her with his merry eyes, whose sweetness she felt even in her sudden preoccupation with the notion which she now launched upon him, leaning forward and pus.h.i.+ng some books and magazines aside, as if she wished to have nothing between her need and his response.

"Dr. Morrell, what should you think of my asking Mr. Peck to give me his little girl?"

"To give you his--"

"Yes. Let me take Idella--keep her--adopt her! I've nothing to do, as you know very well, and she'd be an occupation; and it would be far better for her. What Ralph says is true. She's growing up without any sort of training; and I think if she keeps on she will be mischievous to herself and every one else."

"Really?" asked the doctor. "Is it so bad as that?"

"Of course not. And of course I don't want Mr. Peck to renounce all claim to his child; but to let me have her for the present, or indefinitely, and get her some decent clothes, and trim her hair properly, and give her some sort of instruction--"

"May I come in?" drawled Mrs. Wilmington's mellow voice, and Annie turned and saw Lyra peering round the edge of the half-opened library door. "I've been discreetly hemming and sc.r.a.ping and hammering on the wood-work so as not to overhear, and I'd have gone away if I hadn't been afraid of being overheard."

"Oh, come in, Lyra," said Annie; and she hoped that she had kept the spirit of resignation with which she spoke out of her voice.

Dr. Morrell jumped up with an apparent desire to escape that wounded and exasperated her. She put out her hand quite haughtily to him and asked, "Oh, must you go?"

"Yes. How do you do, Mrs. Wilmington? You'd better get Miss Kilburn to give you a cup of her coffee."

"Oh, I will," said Lyra. She forbore any reference, even by a look, to the intimate little situation she had disturbed.

Morrell added to Annie: "I like your plan. It 'a the best thing you could do."

She found she had been keeping his hand, and in the revulsion from wrath to joy she violently wrung it.

"I'm _so_ glad!" She could not help following him to the door, in the hope that he would say something more, but he did not, and she could only repeat her rapturous grat.i.tude in several forms of incoherency.

She ran back to Mrs. Wilmington. "Lyra, what do you think of my taking Mr.

Peck's little girl?"

Mrs. Wilmington never allowed herself to seem surprised at anything; she was, in fact, surprised at very few things. She had got into the easiest chair in the room, and she answered from it, with a luxurious interest in the affair, "Well, you know what people will say, Annie."

"No, I don't. _What_ will they say?"

"That you're after Mr. Peck pretty openly."

Annie turned scarlet. "And when they find I'm _not_?" she demanded with severity, that had no effect upon Lyra.

"Then they'll say you couldn't get him."

"They may say what they please. What do you think of the plan?"

"I think it would be the greatest blessing for the poor little thing," said Lyra, with a nearer approach to seriousness than she usually made. "And the greatest care for you," she added, after a moment.

"I shall not care for the care. I shall be glad of it--thankful for it,"

cried Annie fervidly.

"If you can get it," Lyra suggested.

"I believe I can get it. I believe I can make Mr. Peck see that it's a duty. I shall ask him to regard it as a charity to me--as a mercy."

"Well, that's a good way to work upon Mr. Peck's feelings," said Lyra demurely. "Was that the plan that Dr. Morrell approved of so highly?"

"Yes."

"I didn't know but it was some course of treatment. You pressed his hand so affectionately. I said to myself, Well, Annie's either an enthusiastic patient, or else--"

"What?" demanded Annie, at the little stop Lyra made.

"Well, you know what people do _say_, Annie."

"What?"

"Why, that you're very much out of health, or--" Lyra made another of her tantalising stops.

"Or what?"

"Or Dr. Morrell is very much in love."