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On the wonderful evening of their first meeting William and Miss Pratt had cozily arranged to be called, respectively, "Ickle boy Baxter" and "Cousin Lola." "Don't you think love is sacred?" he repeated in the deepest tone of which his vocal cords were capable. "Ess," said Miss Pratt. "I do!" William was emphatic. "I think love is the most sacred thing there is. I don't mean SOME kinds of love.
"Hendrik," he repeats more clearly and firmly. "And what is her name?" asks the commandant, patting the little girl. "Sooss," answers the boy. "Mama say 'ickle angel. Hendrik say Sooss." All effort to get any more information from the children was fruitless.
"Oh, cute-ums!" came the silvery voice of Miss Pratt from the likewise silvery porch outside, underneath the summer moon. "Darlin' Flopit, look! Ickle boy Baxter goin' make imitations of darlin' Flopit again. See! Ickle boy Baxter puts head one side, then other side, just like darlin' Flopit. Then barks just like darlin' Flopit!
"In all that summer, sir, so long ago, why did you never tell me what you WERE, until I had gone away and it was too late to show you what I felt? Ah, Ickle Boy Baxter, I never understood until I looked back upon it all, after I had read 'In Dream, on the train that day! THEN I KNEW!" "And now, Lola?" William would say. "Do you understand me, NOW?"
Laura eyed the well-filled box admiringly, and modestly selected the shortest pencil. Bertha Ramsay, having finished her map, leaned back in her seat. "And next time you feel inclined to boo-hoo at the tea-table, hold on to your eyebrows and sing Rule Britannia. DID it want its mummy, poor ickle sing?" Here Bertha's chum, a girl called Inez, chimed in from the other side.
The amusement of the second group having abated through satiety, the minds of its components turned to other topics. "Now Flopit must have his darlin' 'ickle run," said Flopit's mistress, setting the doglet upon the ground. "That's why sweetest Flopit and I and all of us came for a walk, instead of sitting on the nice, cool porch-kins. SEE the sweetie toddle! Isn't he adorable, May?
But it was too dark for him to see the child's face. "Wait a minute," he whispered, and before she could stop him he had lit a match under the shelter of her umbrella. "But he's awake!" he exclaimed. The match went out. "Good ickle quiet boysey, then." Philip winced. "His face, do you know, struck me as all wrong." "All wrong?" "All puckered queerly."
Parcher missed not one, especially as the vocal rivalry between Josie-Joe and Ickle Boy Baxter incited each of them to prevent Miss Pratt from hearing the other. William sang loudest of all; Mr. Parcher had at no time any difficulty in recognizing his voice. "Oh, I love my love in the morning And I love my love at night, I love my love in the dawning, And when the stars are bright.
As it were in a dream he heard his mother's hospitable greetings at the door, and then the little party lingered in the hall, detained by Miss Pratt's discovery of Jane. "Oh, tweetums tootums ickle dirl!" he heard the ravishing voice exclaim. "Oh, tootums ickle blue sash!" "It cost a dollar and eighty-nine cents," said Jane. "Willie sat on the cakes." "Oh no, he didn't," Mrs. Baxter laughed.
"Go home!" repeated William, and then, as Jane stood motionless and inarticulate, transfixed by her idea, he said, almost brokenly, to his dainty companion, "I DON'T know what you'll think of my mother! To let this child " Miss Pratt laughed comfortingly as they started on again. "Isn't mamma's fault, foolish boy Baxter. Ickle dirlies will det datie!"
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