The Claim Jumpers

In the midst of a dissertation on the relation of corn meal to eggs

the door opened, and Mr. Lawton sidled in.

"Oh, here y' are at last!" observed his spouse scornfully, and rattled

on. Lawton nodded awkwardly, and perched himself on the edge of a

chair. He had assumed an ill-fitting suit of store clothes, in which he

unaccustomedly writhed, and evidently, to judge from the sleekness of

his hair, had recently plunged his head in a pail of water. He said

nothing, but whenever Mrs. Lawton was not looking he winked elaborately

and solemnly at Bennington as though to imply that circumstances alone

prevented any more open show of cordiality. At last, catching the young

man's eye at a more than usually propitious moment, he went through the

pantomime of opening a bottle, then furtively arose and disappeared.

Mrs. Lawton, remembering her cakes, ran out. Bennington was left alone

again. He had not spoken six words.

The door slowly opened, and another member of the family sidled in.

Bennington owned a helpless feeling that this was a sort of show, and

that these various actors in it were parading their entrances and

their exits before him. Or that he himself were the object of

inspection on whom the others were satisfying their own curiosity.

The newcomer was a child, a little girl about eight or ten years old.

Bennington liked children as a usual thing. No one on earth could have

become possessed in this one's favour. She was a creature of regular

but mean features, extreme gravity, and evidently of an inquiring

disposition. On seeing her for the first time, one sophisticated would

have expected a deluge of questions. Bennington did. But she merely

stood and stared without winking.

"Hullo, little girl!" Bennington greeted her uneasily.

The creature only stared the harder.

"My doll's name is Garnet M-a-ay," she observed suddenly, with a

long-drawn nasal accent.

After this interesting bit of information another silence fell.

"What is your name, little girl?" Bennington asked desperately at

last.

"Maude," remarked the phenomenon briefly.

This statement she delivered in that whining tone which the extremely

self-conscious infant imagines to indicate playful childishness. She

approached.

"D' you want t' see my picters?" she whimpered confidingly.

Bennington expressed his delight.

For seven geological ages did he gaze upon cheap and horrible woodcuts

of gentlemen in fashionable raiment trying to lean against

conspicuously inadequate rustic gates; equally fashionable ladies, with

flat chests, and rat's nest hair; and animals whose attitudes denoted

playful sportiveness of disposition. Each of these pictures was

explained in minute detail. Bennington's distress became apathy. Mrs.

Lawton returned from the cakes presently, yet her voice seemed to break

in on the duration of centuries.

"Now, Maude!" she exclaimed, with a proper maternal pride, "you mustn't

be botherin' the gentleman." She paused to receive the expected

disclaimer. It was made, albeit a little weakly. "Maude is very good

with her Book," she explained. "Miss Brown, that's the school teacher

that comes over from Hill Town summers, she says Maude reads a sight

better than lots as is two or three years older. Now how old would you

think she was, Mr. de Laney?"