Miss Theodosias Heartstrings | Page 9

when you go in; as--er--a favor. 'Stoop over the
little sleeper,' you know, and 'press your mother's lips to the closed blue

orbs.'" He seemed to be quoting something.
"But I haven't any mother's lips," sighed Miss Theodosia, "only the
kind for thumbs--just thumbs. I'm sorry," she added humbly. Curiously
she experienced no surprise at this intimate turn of a conversation with
a Shadow Man at midnight.
"That's all right--that's all right," the Shadow Man assured her. "Only
thought I'd feel a little better to prove it was done that way. Hadn't any
business mixing up with women's lips and kiddies' orbs, anyway!
Serves me right." And now it was his turn to be humble. "Good night,"
and he was gone.
It was into a tiny bedroom off the kitchen, where a needle of light from
a turned-down lamp barely pricked the darkness, that Miss Theodosia
found her way. She had a dim picture of littering little clothes about the
room and on the flat pillows of the bed the round, flushed face of
Evangeline. In a clothes basket beside the bed she dimly saw a little
mound that might be Elly Precious--it was Elly Precious! The little
mound stirred with a curious, nestling sound, and instantly Stefana
stirred also and crooned. Even in her sleep she was the little Mother.
Miss Theodosia felt her own throat tighten and fill.
Stefana still clasped the bundle of apron in her arms, and Miss
Theodosia did not dare try to take it away from her. She merely
arranged it a little more comfortably and smoothed Stefana out.
Queer!--as if at some other time, in some passed-by existence, she had
smoothed out a child. She seemed to know how. Suddenly she stooped
and kissed, not Stefana's thumbs but her eyes.
"The starch!" murmured Stefana as Miss Theodosia turned away.
"Some'dy get it!" The deep sleep had broken a little, and through the
break trickled a thread of Stefana's troubles. Then, again, silence and
peace. No sound from bed or clothes basket on the floor.
Outside, in the faint starlight, Miss Theodosia drew a long breath. She
softly laughed. Curious how much like a sob a little laugh can be! Oh,
starlit night of adventuring! What next? Miss Theodosia's mantle of

gentle melancholy slid from her shoulders; she no longer felt
apprehensions of growing old. Continually she saw Evangeline's rosy
face on that flat pillow, and the little mound of Elly Precious. She
remembered how tiny the house had looked from the inside, and how
many little littering clothes she had seen. The appealing quality of
empty little clothes! In Miss Theodosia's inside room of her soul,
something stirred behind the locked door.
The irons had cooled too much, and the fire was low. Miss Theodosia
went to work again. As she worked, she talked to herself sociably.
"Adventures thicken! Stars, and angels in caps, and children that walk
in their little sleeps! And little heaps in clothes baskets, that are babies!
And--Theodosia Baxter--a Man! Out of a clear, inky sky! Why weren't
you scared? How do you know--you never even saw his face--maybe
he was a thief, and a marauder, and a thug!"
Granted, if thieves and marauders and those awful things, thugs, carry
little loads or sleep as tenderly as women--and never wake them; if they
are polite and say good night--. What kind of marauding and--and
thugging is that?
"What will Stefana think when she finds my apron in bed with her!"
suddenly laughed Miss Theodosia, breaking the spell. "Funny Stefana!
she goes to my heart, she and her starch--when they're asleep!"
But, awake, Stefana's starch went to Miss Theodosia's back and aching
bones. It was three o'clock when she was ready to go to bed. Over
chairs and the couch in her sitting-room, lay the three redeemed white
dresses, soft again and very smoochless and smooth. Miss Theodosia
stood and admired. She was full of pride and weariness. At last, at
thirty-six, she had done real work; she loved the feel of it in her tired
bones. She loved her night of adventuring. Life--she loved that. So she
went to bed at three, when the birds were beginning to get up. If her
throat--calm and grown-up throat--had not persistently tightened, she
would have gone to sleep laughing at the remembrance of it all. All the
funny night. Why wasn't it funny? Why couldn't she laugh? She sat up
in bed.

On the morning after her adventurous night, as Miss Theodosia
lingered luxuriously over her late breakfast, came bursting in
Evangeline Flagg. A gray-checked something waved from her hand
like a flag of truce. Evangeline always burst into things--houses, and
rooms, and excited little speech.
"Here it is!--that is, if it's yours. Stefana says to ask. 'Tain't ours. Mercy
gracious, no! We don't take