The Heart's Kingdom

When I awoke from a few hours of deep and exhausted sleep I found my

room fast filling with the strenuosities of the day. In fact, I opened

them upon Harriet Henderson, up, dressed and briskly doing. She had a

large pasteboard box with her and the minute I brushed repose from my

eyes she opened it and held up for my inspection a very short tulle

garment besprinkled with tiny silk rosebuds, along with a bonnet and

other wee but distinctly feminine paraphernalia to match. A basket

adorned with a huge bow of tulle came from another box and I was forced

to voice my admiration with the greatest vigor.

"How I'll ever keep from eating Sue up before she gets to the altar, I

can't see," said Harriet, as she held the wee frock for a second against

her breast. It hurts me to the quick of my own breast to see Harriet's

eyes when she broods over Sue. I don't see how she is going to live

life always as hungry as she is now.

"I suppose I might just as well wear my tennis things, because the

guests will be already as completely enraptured as is humanly possible

before my entry upon the scene of action of my own wedding," I said, as

I sat up and took the small bonnet in my own hand. "It is too bad that

Jessie and Letitia should worry themselves over my own wedding frock, if

Susan is--" I was just saying when Nell arrived beside my bed with the

Suckling in the very act of obtaining her early luncheon from the

maternal fount. The nurse has always had to follow Nell about with her

successive hungry offspring.

"Girls, I really don't know what to do, but young Charlotte has given

every single presentable garment that Jimmy possessed to different

unclothed children in the Settlement, who were needed in the pageant,

and Mark and Billy are laughing at her, while Jimmy is howling. I just

ran in to see Harriet a minute and ask her if she--"

"Yes, Jimmie's wedding garments came home from Mrs. Burns' yesterday and

I'll lend them to you just to spite those men, who are simply ruining

Charlotte by the day," said Harriet, as Nell handed her the replete

Suckling wrong end foremost and picked up the small tulle bonnet with a

gurgle of maternal rapture that was in some ways as young as the happy

gurgle that the Suckling gave as she settled into Harriet's dependable

arms for her morning nap. Harriet cradled her against her own round,

firm breast and for a second brooded then joined in Nell's rapture over

the garments for the bedizening of wee Susan.

"If Harriet didn't dress and discipline my children I feel sure they

would be found naked in a reform school," Nell said, with a happy and

careless gratitude. There are some women to whom life is incidental and

maternity the most casual adventure of all. The happy-go-lucky variety

are apt to produce just such children as Charlotte or young James or

Susan, and it is well if into their young lives there comes the hungry

woman with a brooding mission.