The Seeker | Page 9

who dallied sensuously
with created objects.
But the unspiritual one was riding the new horse at a furious gallop,
and the glance of reproof was unnoted save by the old man--who
wondered if it might be by any absurd twist that the boy most like the
godless father were more godly than the one so like his mother that
every note of his little voice and every full glance of his big blue eyes
made the old heart flutter.
In the afternoon came callers from the next house; Dr. Crealock,
rubicund and portly, leaning on his cane, to pass the word of seasonable

cheer with his old friend and pastor; and with him his tiny niece to
greet the grandchildren of his friend. The Doctor went with his host to
the study on the second floor, where, as a Christmas custom, they
would drink some Madeira, ancient of days, from a cask prescribed and
furnished long since by the doctor.
The little boy was for the moment left alone with the tiny niece; to stare
curiously, now that she was close, at one of whom he had caught
glimpses in a window of the big house next door. She was clad in a
black velvet cloak and hood, with pink satin next her face inside the
hood, and she carried a large closely-wrapped doll which she affected
to think might have taken cold. With great self-possession she doffed
her cloak and overshoes; then slowly and tenderly unwound the
wrappings of the doll, talking meanwhile in low mothering tones, and
going with it to the fire when she had it uncloaked. Of the boy who
stared at her she seemed unconscious, and he could do no more than
stand timidly at a little distance. An eye-flash from the maid may have
perceived his abjectness, for she said haughtily at length, "I'm
astonished no one in this house knows where Clytie is!"
He drew nearer by as far as he could slowly spread his feet twice.
"I know--now--she went to get two glasses from the dresser to take to
my grandfather and that gentleman." He felt voluble from the mere ease
of the answer. But she affected to have heard nothing, and he was
obliged to speak again.
"Now--why, I know a doll that shuts up her eyes every time she lies
down."
The doll at hand was promptly extended on the little lap and with a
click went into sudden sleep while the mother rocked it. He could have
ventured nothing more after this pricking of his inflated little speech. A
moment he stood, suffering moderately, and then would have edged
cautiously away with the air of wishing to go, only at this point,
without seeming to see him, she chirped to him quite winningly in a
soft, warm little voice, and there was free talk at once. He manfully let
her tell of all her silly little presents before talking of his own. He even

listened about the doll, whose name Santa Claus had thoughtfully
painted on the box in which she came; it was a French name, "Fragile."
Then, being come to names, they told their own. Hers, she said, was
Lillian May.
"But your uncle, now--that gentleman--he called you Nancy when you
came in." He waited for her solving of this.
"Oh, Uncle Doctor doesn't know it yet, what my real name is. They call
me Nancy, but that's a very disagreeable name, so I took Lillian May
for my real name. But I tell very few persons," she added, importantly.
Here he was at home; he knew about choosing a good name.
"Did you give up the gold-piece you found?" he asked. But this puzzled
her.
"'A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches,'" he reminded
her. "Didn't you find a gold-piece like Ben Holt did?"
But it seemed she had never found anything. Indeed, once she had lost
a dime, even on the way to spending it for five candy bananas and five
jaw-breakers. Plainly she had chosen her good name without knowing
of the case of Ben Holt. Then he promised to show her something the
most wonderful in all the world, which she would never believe
without seeing it, and led her to where the candy cane towered to their
shoulders in its corner. He saw at once that it meant less to her than it
did to him.
"Oh, it's a candy cane!" she said, calling it a candy cane commonly,
with not even a hush of tone, as one would say "a brick house" or "a
gold watch," or anything. She, promptly detecting his disappointment at
her coldness, tried to simulate the fervour of an initiate, but this may
never be done so as to deceive any one who has truly