The Cricket Part 8

"No, Max is my mother," explained the youngster.

"You see," said Wally, "Isabelle is a little devil. You might as well know the worst at once. She's got no manners at all, and she's spoiled to death."

"Wally, you don't have to tell everything you know," quoted Isabelle, sharply.

"Upon my word!" said Miss Barnes. "How old is she?"

"She's just had her fourth birthday."

"But she needs a nurse, not a governess."

"I won't have a nurse. I want you."

"She's had a lot of women, mostly old ones. I told Mrs. Bryce I thought she ought to have a young woman with her, and she told me that if I knew so much about it, I could get her a governess myself."

"I see," said Miss Barnes; "and just what do you want her governess to do?"

"Ride and swim with her, and keep her out of mischief. I suppose you would teach her something--letters and counting, and all that?"

"A governess usually does," she smiled.

"You would have full charge of her. We live in the country from April till Thanksgiving, and in town the rest of the time."

"Come on, Ann, let's go; I'm tired," interrupted Isabelle.

"But you aren't letting this baby decide who is to take care of her?"

she protested.

"I thought it was better. She gets rid of one a month, so in the end she does decide."

"But it's so absurd."

"We're--we're an absurd family," he admitted, gravely.

"Don't talk, Wally; come on."

"What does she call you?" Miss Barnes inquired.

"Wally. My name is Walter, but every one calls me Wally. She calls her mother Max. We try to break her of it, but we can't."

Miss Barnes shook her head.

"I want to be a governess, you know, not a nurse."

Isabelle realized that a crisis was at hand.

"Sometimes I'm nice, aren't I, Wally?" she appealed.

Miss Barnes could not have told why, but for the first time this abnormal, prissy child, with her self-a.s.surance, and her impertinence, caught at her sympathies. Wally saw that she wavered.

"Suppose that we call it an experiment for a month. I'll pay a hundred dollars a month. Come out with us this afternoon and try it. She's the limit of a kid, but she's got a lot of sense for her age, and maybe she'd be all right if somebody just gave her mind to her."

"I'm willing to try it for a month, if I may have full charge of her.

Would her mother agree to that?"

"Oh, Max is never home; besides, she never sees me," spoke up the child.

"She does see you," protested Wally.

Isabelle made no reply, but somehow Miss Barnes caught the situation--the sense of neglect, of the child's loneliness.

"I'll come for a month at the salary you mentioned."

"Good. Can you pack a bag and go out on the 4:10 with us? We'll send you home in a taxi and send for you."

She considered a moment.

"All right."

She rose, explained to the head of the bureau, and later they went out together.

"Wally, when's lunch?" demanded Isabelle.

"Now. We'll send Miss Barnes off in our cab, and pick up another. A cab will come for you at three thirty, Miss Barnes, and we'll meet you at the Information booth."

"I'll be there. Good-bye, Isabelle."

"Good-bye, Ann."

Wally and Isabelle made their way to his club, where she insisted upon all the _verboten_ things for lunch.

"Are you allowed to eat that?" he demanded.

"Oh, yes, at parties."

"Don't it make you sick?"

"Yes. You're always sick after parties," she replied.

A man stopped at the table to address a few jocose remarks to Wally, and he turned his glance upon the small girl.

"Who is your beautiful companion, Wally?" he inquired.

"My daughter, Isabelle. This is Duncan, the Club cut-up," he added to his guest.

She inspected the man closely.

"Who cuts you up?" she inquired.