Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/38

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always tried to arrange his affairs so as to be able to take Laurel off alone with him for two weeks somewhere. The month she spent with him was usually August or September, and he usually took her into the woods.

Stephen had an idea that the farther away from people and conventionalities he could get Laurel, the more susceptible she would be to him, and to his suggestions. However, it seemed sometimes absurd even to hope to be much of a factor in forming the child's tastes and inclinations. He had only thirty short days with her each year, and he knew that during the long lapses between her visits, the influence she lived under was not conducive to the growth of the kind of seeds he planted.

When Laurel was a little girl, seven or eight years old, often Stephen would ask her what form of amusement she would prefer for an afternoon, and almost invariably she replied, when they were in New York, "Oh, the merry-go-round, or the monkeys at the Zoo." He didn't always give her the merry-go-round, nor the monkeys either. He was forever being torn between his inclination to indulge her slightest whim or wish, and thereby win her approval, and a desire to remould those whims and wishes.

When Laurel was ten years old, Stephen began taking her to picture galleries, in an attempt to instill in her some appreciation of beauty in art. Children like colored pictures, he argued. Why not give vthem good ones? He used to take her to hear good