Lavendar and David up to the Stuffed Animal House very often, "to
try on." David's coming was always a delight, but the old man fretted
her, somehow;--he was so good. She said so to William King, who
laughed at the humor of a good woman's objection to goodness. The
incongruity of such a remark from her lips was as amusing as a child's
innocently base comment.
[Illustration: Her sewing was a pathetic blunder of haste and
happiness. _Awakening of Helena Richie_]
William had fallen into the habit of drawing up and calling out "good
morning" whenever he and his mare passed her gate. Mrs. Richie's lack
of common sense seemed to delight the sensible William. When he was
with her, he was in the frame of mind that finds everything a joke. It
was a demand for the eternal child in her, to which, involuntarily,
she responded. She laughed at him, and even teased him about his
shabby buggy with a gayety that made him tingle with pleasure. She
used to wonder at herself as she did it--conscious and uneasy, and
resolving every time that she would not do it again. She had none of
this lightness with any one else. With Dr. Lavendar she was reserved
to the point of coldness, and with young Sam Wright, matter-of-fact to
a discouraging degree.
But she did not see Sam often in the next month. It had occurred to
Sam senior that Adam Smith might cure the boy's taste for 'bosh'; so,
by his father's orders, his Sunday afternoons were devoted to _The
Wealth of Nations_.
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