Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/1030

956 flush still lingering on his thin cheeks, "when any such occurrence as this takes place—and I regret to confess they are all too frequent—to secure first an explanation from my daughter of her reasons for her act, and then to explain to her as logically as possible wherein she has erred."

He sighed deeply as he turned to the child, but his tone when he spoke to her was very gentle. "Hildegarde," he asked, "by what mental process did you reach the conclusion that this extraordinary act was justifiable?"

Hildegarde leaned her brown curls comfortably against his narrow chest, and opened her pink mouth in a large and deeply satisfying yawn. Her eyes were the color of her curls, and her complexion was much the same shade. Against these rich tones her little white teeth now gleamed as she smiled hospitably at the governess. There were two adorable dimples in her cheeks, and her chin revealed a third. She looked rather tired, but politely interested in the newcomer, and wholly oblivious of the harrowing incident which had just occurred. Her father's question, if indeed she understood anything of it, was plainly of no immediate importance. Nevertheless, she finally answered it in the casual tone of one who begins a pleasant chat.

"Made yelly woll," she remarked.

The professor reflected deeply for a moment. Then his face brightened.

"Ah," he exclaimed, almost briskly, turning to Mademoiselle Verrier, "she says she was making a jelly roll. I understand. We had such a—er—preparation for luncheon to-day, and I recall that Hildegarde was quite impressed at the time by its adhesive properties and the fact that it unrolled as she ate it."

He sank back with an air of relief and stroked Hildegarde's curls unwittingly, his eyes turning anxiously toward the notes on his desk. The episode seemed ended. Mademoiselle Verrier moved restlessly in her chair. Over her settled the chill conviction that the vista opened by this new position was not a restful one. Evidently the half had not been told her; though, as she mentally reviewed the incidents of the past few days, they seemed full of recitals of the eccentricities of Professor Seymour and the phenomena connected with his purposeful training of his motherless child. Her movement attracted his attention, and once more he summoned memory and duty sternly to their posts. A glance at the rug gave him his cue, and he was about to speak, when Hildegarde anticipated him. She was getting sleepy and wanted the crisis over, whatever it was.

"Bidget said, 'Go 'way; can't make yelly woll, she murmured, drowsily.

"The cook said, 'Go away; you can't make a jelly roll, interpreted her parent, with pathetic loyalty. "So, finding no encouragement in the kitchen, you sought such substitutes as presented themselves. That seems quite logical."

He turned to the governess, as if challenging any flaw in the defence.

"I must admit, in justice," he remarked, thoughtfully, "that she showed a certain wisdom in her selection. Indeed," he added, conscientiously giving his entire mind to the matter, "from what I recall of the jelly roll we ate, I fancy Hildegarde's might not suffer by a comparison. Eliminating the question of size, there is really a remarkable resemblance." He spoke with perfect seriousness, and the Frenchwoman, who had looked up in the buoyant expectation of a joke, subsided again into deep gloom.

His reassuring reflections, while they deeply impressed her, failed to reach the ear of Hildegarde, who had dropped off into a restful slumber. He looked down on her, and, as he studied her features, the lines of his cold face relaxed a little.

"I trust, my dear Mademoiselle Verrier," he added, simply, "that this slight episode will not discourage you, nor darken the prospect of your future relations with my daughter. She has days of good behavior, I assure you, and I think I may claim, without undue parental pride, that she is an attractive child. But her environment is peculiar, and my theories as to her training are, I admit, somewhat unusual. When her mother passed from us, Hildegarde was six weeks old. I decided then that as we two were to be dependent upon each other for companionship and—er—happiness, I would train her according to my conception of what is fitting in a woman. To the best of my poor ability I have conscientiously done so.