Belle Kanaris Maniates

“ She had tried most assiduously to cultivate an acquaintance with members of child-world, but into that kingdom there is no open sesame. The sure keen intuition of a child recognizes on sight a kindred spirit and Silvia’s forced advances met with but indifferent response. She wistfully proposed to me one day that we adopt a child. My doubts as to the advisability of such a course were confirmed by Huldah, our strong staff in household help. In our section of the country servants were generally quite conversant with the intimate and personal affairs of the home. ”

“ I lifted the child to my knee, and speaking more gently to him than I had ever done, I asked:
“Di, did you and Tolly play in the sandpile yesterday?”
He was quite emphatic in his affirmative.
“Well, tell Ocean: Did Tolly go away and leave you?”
“Tolly goed away,” he confirmed.
“Oh, Lucien!” protested Beth, laughing. “He’s too little to know what you are talking about or to remember.”
“Lucien’s ruling passion strong in death,” murmured Rob. “He can’t help cross-examining the cradle even!”
“Which way,” I resumed, ignoring these interruptions, “did Tolly go––that way?” pointing towards the woods. ”

“ Rob’s laughter was so free and spontaneous that I had to join in against my will. Ptolemy, who had seemed a little apprehensive of the verdict, looked accordingly relieved.
“That’s a fine letter, young man,” approved Rob. “Stepdaddy ought to take you into his law firm.”
“No,” declared Beth. “I think Ptolemy has inherited his mother’s gift. He should be a writer.”
“Not on your life!” cried Ptolemy with 275 feeling. “I want to live things instead of writing about them.”
A tear or two came into Silvia’s eyes.
“It was very sweet in you, Ptolemy, to try to get the money for mudder.” ”

“ The boys would. I backed from the room, the whip behind me, carefully kept without Silvia’s angle of vision. Before Ptolemy resumed his rôle of chief, he bestowed a knowing and maddening wink upon me.
I wished that we had remained neighbor-less. I wished that the aborigines would scalp Felix Polydore and the writer of Modern Antiquities. Then we could land their brats on the Probate Court. I wished that this were the reign of Herod. I vowed I would backslide from the Presbyterian faith since it no longer included in its 60 articles of belief the eternal damnation of infants. ”

“ Silvia now said in a tragic, hoarse whisper––“the Polydores!”
“Oh, do you know them?” asked Miss Frayne. “Dr. Felix Polydore, the eminent LL.D. or something like that.”
“The whole family are D’s,” I said.
“His wife is the highest of high-brows, and they are averse to interviews. They moved to a small city sometime ago to be secluded. Just think of my opportunity! I have them headlined! ‘The Haunted House of Hope Haven. Ghost that appears at midnight scientifically explained by the distinguished Dr. Felix Polydore.’”
“I think we are in luck,” I said to Silvia, on second thoughts. ”

“ Pythagoras uttered high-trebled, thin-toned whines and ever and anon Emerald added a basso profundo accompaniment, making a combination that was most trying to the ears at close range.
“I don’t know,” said Rob, “as I want Beth subjected to such a realistic performance. We will loiter in the distance.”
“Your rehearsal,” I assured Ptolemy, “is very good, but you must remember that Miss Frayne is used to encountering things far more terrible than ghosts. She may insist on coming right in here to investigate. ”

“ Some people have children born unto them, some acquire children and others have children thrust upon them. Silvia and I are of the last named class. We have no offspring of our own, but yesterday, today, and forever we have those of our neighbor. ”

“ Silvia’s time and attention were devoted to the 58 sick child. Huldah was putting in all her leisure moments at the dentist’s, where she was acquiring her third set of teeth, and joy rode unconfined and unrestrained with our “boarders.”
Polydore proclivities made the Reign of Terror formerly known as the French Revolution seem like an ice cream festival. I don’t regard myself as a particularly nervous man, but there’s a limit! Their war whoops and screeches got on my nerves and temper to the extent of sending me into their midst one evening brandishing a whip and commanding immediate silence. ”

“ Rob actually touched her hand in his distress at her grief.
“Ptolemy is too smart to get lost anywhere,” I declared. “He knows fully as much about woodcraft as he does about every other kind of craft. He’s one of his mother’s antiquities personified. But haven’t you been able to find anyone who saw him after you went for your ride?”
“No; even the hotel help were all out on the lake.”
“And he left Diogenes here, absolutely unguarded?”
“Well!” admitted Silvia, “he tied Diogenes to a tree near the sandpile.” ”

“ Four weeks of unalloyed bliss and then the summer vacation times arrived, bringing joy to the heart of the Polydores and the teacher of the ungraded room, but deep gloom to the hearthside of the Wades.
One misfortune always brings another. A rival applicant received the coveted attorneyship and we bade a sad farewell to piano, saddle-horse, automobile and journey, the furnishings to our Little House of Dreams.
46
“I did want you to have a car, Lucien,” sighed Silvia, regretfully, “and you worked so hard this last year, you need a trip. Won’t you go somewhere with Rob––without me?” ”

“ If she had gone down there and caught the Polydores unawares, she would have come back here and revealed our secret, and there would be the end of Silvia’s vacation.”
“To tell the truth, Lucien, I wasn’t thinking so much of that as I was of Miss Frayne’s interests. You see she has come a long ways for a story and if it collapsed from her ghostly expectations to a showdown of four healthy boys, the blow might mean a good deal to her in a business way. I think we had better let Ptolemy plant a ghost just once more for her. You know you made him take a reef in the flapping of ghostly garments. ”

“ I asked perplexedly.
“Well, you see,” explained Silvia, “that when a girl––a coquette girl like Beth––is as sure of a man as she is of Rob, she gets a touch of contrariness or offishness or something. She said it would have been too prosaic and cut and dried if they had gone away for a day in the woods and come back engaged. She wants the unexpected.” ”

“ You won’t send me back, mudder,” he pleaded, looking wistfully at the foam-crested water of the little lake.
I wondered mutely if Silvia could resist the appeal in the eyes of the neglected boy when he turned his imploring gaze to hers, and the delight depicted in Diogenes’ eyes at “Tolly’s” arrival. She could not.
“You may stay as long as we do,” she said slowly, “if you are a good boy and will not play too rough with Diogenes.”
We had reached the hotel by this time, 86 and with a wild “ki yi” Ptolemy dashed for the shore, dragging the delighted Diogenes with him. ”

“ I inquired, “what do they keep––a soup house?”
“They are literary people, the highest of 16 high-brows. Their name is Polydore, and the head of the house–––”
“Mr. or Mrs.?” I interrupted.
“The head of the house,” pursued Silvia, ignoring my question, “is a collector.”
“So I inferred. Has he a large collection of soup plates?”
“She collects antiquities and writes their history. He pursues science.” ”

“ The Polydores, like the poor, we always have with us.”
“I saw that every one of them except Ptolemy was in bed at eight o’clock last night and the night before,” said Silvia. “You don’t mean to tell me––”
“Yes, I do mean,” laughed Beth. “Not Ptolemy, though. He has become too dignified to spy on us, but last night as we sat here on the settee, we heard a suppressed 257 sneeze, and Rob pulled Emerald from underneath.” ”

“ I came here. But we’ll go back to our own house. We have learned to cook. Come on, boys.”
“You’ll stay right here with me, son,” and Rob’s hand came down intimately on Ptolemy’s shoulder.
“It isn’t likely we’ll turn them out into the woods, when they haven’t a roof over their heads,” declared Silvia, drawing Emerald to her side.
“I think you are absolutely inhuman, Lucien,” cried Beth. “I don’t see what has changed you so,” and she proceeded to make room for Pythagoras in the porch swing.
217
“Did the fire scare you?” asked Miss Frayne gently, as she put her arms about Demetrius. ”

“ Wade?”
“Yes! The arms and the head?”
“A fake figure put up by some practical joker for the purpose of frightening timid people and encouraging the credulous. I didn’t want to spoil your little picnic, so I kept still.”
“Those sounds, Lucien!” reminded Silvia.
“Were from a cat chorus. They were prowling about the house.”
“You’re sure some lawyer, Mr. Wade,” doubtfully complimented my grateful landlady, as we went out of the room after breakfast.
“Lucien,” asked Rob sotto voce, joining me on the veranda, “why don’t the cats you speak of catch that lot of mice?” ”

“ We’re getting tired of being here alone. I had to tie Demetrius up this morning. He was bound to go over to the hotel and see mudder.”
“Don’t one of you dare to make such an attempt,” I said peremptorily. “You keep right on here for a few days. Some of us, either Rob, or Beth and I will drop over every day. If you play your ghost just 187 as I tell you and keep out of sight, I’ll bring you over some ice cream tomorrow.” ”

“ She fled into the parlor. The landlady, who seemed to have a panacea for all ills, suggested that she might tack mosquito netting around the little balcony extending from our bedroom, and then she could sit there in comfort when the mosquitoes bothered.
“That’s what the last lady that had that 76 room did,” she said, “but when she left, she took the netting with her. We keep a supply in our little store.”
Silvia immediately sought the hotel store and bought a quantity of the netting and a goodly stock of the mosquito lotion. ”

“ Am going home. Tell Beth I bet she dasent go to the haunted house alone at night. Ptolemy.”
“Poor Huldah!” sighed Silvia.
“I thought he was having the time of his life here,” said Rob.
“He was sore,” declared Beth, “because you and Lucien wouldn’t take him with 111 you on the fishing trip. He was moping by himself all the morning.”
“Trying to think up some new deviltry,” I theorized, “to make us feel bad.”
“No,” asserted Silvia, “I think he really misses the boys. The Polydores, for all their scrappings, are very clannish. But how do you suppose he got down to Windy Creek?” ”

“ Rob isn’t the kind of a man who will stand for too much thwarting,” I replied.
“If he’d only play up a little bit to some one else, it would bring things to a climax,” said my wife sagely.
“There’s no one else to play up to. The blonde left today because it was so slow here.”
“Maybe some new girl will come tomorrow,” said Silvia, “or there’s that trim little waitress who is waiting her way through college. ”

“ Beth and Ptolemy went up shore, sticks and stones and rocks being no obstacles to their feet. Rob and I sought the society of the snakes, while Silvia and Diogenes, mosquito-netted, watched a game of croquet. ”

“ Diogenes played football with the croquet balls and bruised one of his toes, besides hitting the landlady’s child in the eye. Silvia went for a walk which had been pictured in the advertisements. She speedily returned, her ardor dampened.
“There are so many sticks and stones and rocks,” she said in a discouraged tone, “that there was no pleasure in walking. I nearly sprained my ankle.”
“Well, the real sport we haven’t tried yet,” I said. “We’ll get a boat and take 80 Diogenes and go for a row on the lake.” ”

“ The next morning Rob tried earnestly and vainly to drive a wedge in Beth’s good graces, but she treated him with a casual tolerance that finally put him in an ill humor which he took out on me with many a gibe at my “stone fence spirit.”
Men of my profession who have to deal with facts rather than fancy are not believers in the supernatural. I was sure that the extending arm and the beckoning 125 finger were there, but belonged to no ghost. ”

“ We paused on the threshold. A human windmill of whirling legs and arms––Polydore legs and arms––flashed before our eyes.
“Stop!” I thundered.
The flying wheel of arms and legs slacked, ran a few times, then slowly stopped, and the Polydore quintette assumed normal positions.
“Halloa, stepdaddy!”
A landslide composed of Emerald, Pythagoras, and Demetrius started toward me. I side-stepped and let Rob receive the charge.
“Line them up now, for attention,” I directed Ptolemy. “I have something to say to you all.” ”

“ I repeated Rob’s remarks to Silvia when I returned to our room, and she betrayed Beth’s confidences in regard to Rob.
“She says she would like him if it were not for one trait that she dislikes more than any other in a man and that it was sufficient in her estimation to counterbalance all his good qualities.”
“What can she mean?” I asked bewildered. “I don’t see a flaw in Rob, except for his being a woman-hater, and he surely hasn’t betrayed that fact to her, 99 judging from his manner toward her. I think he is making an effort to be nice to her on my account, and she doesn’t appreciate it.” ”