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Updated: June 20, 2025
"Hello!" he said, the timbre of real youth in his voice, which childhood is so quick to detect from the silly enameling of tone coated on by grown-ups for the occasion. "I want to paint you, youngster." "Oh, Lilly, what fun!" "Then she is your sister?" "Oh no, Mrs. Daab; she is my daughter." "But the name " "It's our way together." "How droll!" "Do you think I'm pretty?"
"But you're not quite alone, grandmother," said Kalle, laughing. "There are two grown-ups and half a score of children about you all day long." "Ah yes, you can say what you like, but all those I was young with are dead now, and many others that I've seen grow up. Every week some one that I know dies, and here am I still living, only to be a burden to others."
They are not really friendly to Peter, who had a mischievous way of stealing up behind them and trying to blow them out; but they are so fond of fun that they were on his side to-night, and anxious to get the grown-ups out of the way. So as soon as the door of 27 closed on Mr. and Mrs.
The quick-moving sprite seemed to be everywhere into the sugar-bowl, the cooky jar, the steaming teakettle before one could turn about. Urged on by the impatient little girl, the grown-ups made short work of breakfast. After the meal, according to time-honoured Brower custom, they formed in procession, single file, Minna first, then Ben with Baby Robin.
She was not like Marjorie Fleming, that immortal little girl, who was wont to be angry when offensively condescending grown-ups addressed her as a babe in intellect. For Marjorie had no real sense of humour; all the humour of her literary composition, verse and prose, was of the unconscious variety. This child was only amused at being taken for a baby. Then came the parting.
The grown-ups would take it and eat it, eat it alive with its eyes, its teeth, its legs! While it squeaked and tried to bite their lips. . . . I frowned, but . . . but why did my teeth move as though I were munching? The creature was loathsome, disgusting, terrible, but I ate it, ate it greedily, afraid of distinguishing its taste or smell.
Aunt Hetty was there, bossing Agnes, and they were both "dudsing," as Elly called it to herself, leaning over trunks, disappearing in and out of closets, turning inside out old bags of truck, sorting over, and, for all Elly could see, putting the old duds back again, just where they had been before. Grown-ups did seem to run round in circles, so much of their time!
"She d be too proud to have tea with a bailiff, I expect; you never know how grown-ups will take the simplest things." It was Kathleen who said this. "Well, I'll tell you what," said Gerald, lazily turning on the stone bench. "You all go along, and meet your bailiff. A picnic's a picnic. And I'll wait for Mademoiselle."
With grown-ups, I was at times inclined to be pert, my degree of impudence depending no doubt upon how ill at ease I was and how perfectly at ease I wished to appear. Because of the constant need for appearing happier than I really was, I developed a knack for saying things in an amusing, sometimes an epigrammatic, way.
A blue silk frock, and shoes with shining buckles; never had such a finely dressed child been seen in Elhalten before. The simple folk never dreamt that the buckles were real diamonds and worth a large sum of money. When Hugo and Elsa met again on the following Sunday, you may be sure that they had much to talk about, at least when they were left alone undisturbed by grown-ups!
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