When Beulah, refreshed by a cup of tea and further sustained by the
fact that Margaret and Peter had both telephoned they were coming to
dinner, returned to her charge, she found the stolid, apathetic child
she had left, sprawling face downward on the floor, in a passion of
convulsive weeping.

CHAPTER IV

PETER ELUCIDATES

It was Peter who got at the heart of the trouble. Margaret tried, but
though Eleanor clung to her and relaxed under the balm of her gentle
caresses, the child remained entirely inarticulate until Peter
gathered her up in his arms, and signed to the others that he wished
to be left alone with her.

By the time he rejoined the two in the drawing-room--he had missed his
after-dinner coffee in the long half-hour that he had spent shut into
the guest room with the child--Jimmie and Gertrude had arrived, and
the four sat grouped together to await his pronouncement.

"She thinks she has adenoids. She wants the doll that David left in
that carpetbag of hers he forgot to take out of the 'Handsome cab.'
She wants to be loved, and she wants to grow up and write poetry for
the newspapers," he announced. "Also she will eat a piece of bread and
butter and a glass of milk, as soon as it can conveniently be provided
for her."

"When did you take holy orders, Gram?" Jimmie inquired. "How do you
work the confessional? I wish I could make anybody give anything up to
me, but I can't. Did you just go into that darkened chamber and say to
the kid, 'Child of my adoption,--cough,' and she coughed, or are you
the master of some subtler system of choking the truth out of 'em?"

"Anybody would tell anything to Peter if he happened to want to know
it," Margaret said seriously. "Wouldn't they, Beulah?"

Beulah nodded. "She wants to be loved," Peter had said. It was so
simple for some people to open their hearts and give out
love,--easily, lightly. She was not made like that,--loving came hard
with her, but when once she had given herself, it was done. Peter
didn't know how hard she had tried to do right with the child that
day.

"The doll is called the rabbit doll, though there is no reason why it
should be, as it only looks the least tiny bit like a rabbit, and is a
girl. Its other name is Gwendolyn, and it always goes to bed with her.
Mrs. O'Farrels aunt said that children always stopped playing with
dolls when they got to be as big as Eleanor, but she isn't never
going to stop.--You must get after that dou