Part 11

It was plain that all three children thought the statement remarkable; they repeatedly looked from the light tan grandchild to the dark brown grandmother and back again, while Daisy, in particular, had an air of doubt. “Are you _sure_?” she asked. “Are you _sure_ you’re its gran’ma?”

“Yes’m indeed!”

“Honest?”

“Yes’m indeed!”

“Well——” Daisy began, and was about to mention the grounds of her doubt; but tact prevailed with her, and she asked a question instead.

“What’s its name?”

“Name Willamilla.”

“What?”

“Name Willamilla.”

“Willamilla?” said Daisy. “I never heard it before, but it’s a right pretty name.”

“Yes’m indeed!” the coloured woman agreed enthusiastically. “Willamilla lovin’, happy, _gran’_ name!”

“What’s the dog’s name?” Laurence asked.

“Hossifer.”

Laurence frowned importantly. “Is he full-blooded?” he inquired.

“Is he who?”

“I guess he isn’t very full-blooded,” Laurence said. “Will he bite?”

“Hossifer?” she said. “Hossifer, he a mighty lovin’ dog! Bite? He ain’ bite nobody. Hossifer, he a lovin’-hearted dog.”

Elsie had come out of her gate, and she bent over the wagon with Daisy. “Oh, my!” she said wistfully. “I do wish we could have this baby to play with.”

“Couldn’t we?” Daisy asked of the baby’s grandmother. “Would you be willing to sell it to us?”

“No’m,” the coloured woman replied, though she manifested no surprise at the question. “No’m; my son-’law, he wouldn’ lem me sell no Willamilla.”

“Well, would you give it to us, then?”

“No’m. Can’ give Willamilla ’way.”

“Oh, my!” Daisy exclaimed. “I do wish we could have this baby to play with awhile, anyway.”

The woman appeared to consider this, and her processes of considering it interested the children. Her streaked eyes were unusually large and protuberant; she closed them, letting the cumbrous lids roll slowly down over them, and she swayed alarmingly as she did this, almost losing her balance, but she recovered herself, opened her eyes widely, and said:

“How long you want play with Willamilla, honey?”

“Oh!” Daisy cried. “Will you let us? Oh, all afternoon!”

“Listen me,” said Willamilla’s grandmother. “I got errand I love to go on. Wagon push ri’ heavy, too. I leave Willamilla with you lovin’ li’l whi’ chillun, an’ come back free o’clock.”

“Oh, lovely!” Daisy and Elsie both shouted.

“Free o’clock,” said the coloured woman.

“That’ll give us _lots_ o’ time,” said Elsie. “Maybe almost an hour!”

The woman took a parcel from the wagon; it was wrapped in an old newspaper, and its shape was the shape of a bottle, though not that of an infant’s milk-bottle. Also, the cork was not quite secure, and the dampened paper about the neck of this bottle gave forth a faint odour of sweet spirits of niter mingled with the spicy fragrance of a decoction from juniper, but naturally neither the odour nor the shape of the parcel meant anything to the children. It meant a great, great deal to Willamilla’s grandma, however; and her lovingness visibly increased as she took the parcel in her arms.

“I’m go’ take this nice loaf o’ bread to some po’ ole sick folks whut live up the alley ovuh yonnuh,” she said. “Hossifer he go’ stay with Willamilla an’ li’l wagon.” She moved away, but paused to speak to Hossifer, who followed her. “Hossifer, you the lovin’est dog in a wide worl’, but you go on back, honey!” She petted him, then waved him away. “Go on back, Hossifer!” And Hossifer returned to the wagon, while she crossed the street toward the mouth of an alley.

The children stared after her, being even more interested just then in her peculiar progress than they were in their extraordinary new plaything. When the coloured woman reached a point about half way across the street, she found a difficulty in getting forward; her feet bore her slowly sidewise for some paces; she seemed to wander and waver; then, with an effort at concentration, she appeared to see a new path before her, followed it, and passed from sight down the alley.

Behind her she left a strongly favourable impression. Never had Daisy and Elsie met an adult more sympathetic to their wishes or one more easily persuaded than this obliging woman, and they turned to the baby with a pleasure in which there was mingled a slight surprise. They began to shout endearing words at Willamilla immediately, however, and even Master Coy looked upon the infant with a somewhat friendly eye, for he was warmed toward it by a sense of temporary proprietorship, and also by a feeling of congeniality, due to a supposition of his in regard to Willamilla’s sex. But of course Laurence’s greater interest was in Hossifer, though the latter’s manner was not encouraging. Hossifer’s brow became furrowed with lines of suspicion; he withdrew to a distance of a dozen yards or so, and made a gesture indicating that he was about to sit down, but upon Laurence’s approaching him, he checked the impulse, and moved farther away, muttering internally.

“Good doggie!” Laurence said. “_I_ won’t hurt you. Hyuh, Hossifer! Hyuh, Hossifer!”

Hossifer’s mutterings became more audible, his brow more furrowed, and his eyes more undecided. Thus by every means he sought to make plain that he might adopt any course of action whatever, that he but awaited the decisive impulse, would act as it impelled, and declined responsibility for what he should happen to do on the spur of the moment. Laurence made a second effort to gain his confidence, but after failing conspicuously he thought best to return to Willamilla and the ladies.

“My goodness!” he said. “What on earth you doin’ to that baby?”

Chattering in the busiest and most important way, they had taken Willamilla from the wagon and had settled which one was to have the “first turn.” This fell to Daisy, and holding Willamilla in her arms rather laboriously—for Willamilla was fourteen months old and fat—she began to walk up and down, crooning something she no doubt believed to be a lullaby.

“It’s my turn,” Elsie said. “I’ve counted a hunderd.”

“No fair!” Daisy protested at once. “You counted too fast.” And she continued to pace the sidewalk with Willamilla while Elsie walked beside her, insisting upon a rightful claim.

“Here!” Laurence said, coming up to them. “Listen! You’re holdin’ him all sprawled out and everything—you better put him back in the wagon. I bet if you hold him that way much longer you’ll spoil somep’m in him.”

“_Him?_” Both of his fair friends shouted; and they stared at Laurence with widening eyes. “Well, I declare!” Elsie said pettishly. “Haven’t you even got sense enough to know it’s a girl, Laurence Coy?”

“It is not!”

“It is, too!” they both returned.

“Listen here!” said Laurence. “Look at his name! I guess that settles it, don’t it?”

“It settles it he’s a girl,” Daisy cried. “I bet you don’t even know what her name is.”

“Oh, I don’t?”

“Well, what is it, then?”

“Willie Miller.”

“What?”

“Willie Miller!” Laurence said. “That’s what his own gran’mother said his name was. She said his name’s Willie Miller.”

Upon this the others shouted in derision; and with the greatest vehemence they told him over and over that Willamilla’s name was Willamilla, that Willamilla was a girl’s name, that Willamilla was consequently a girl, that she was a girl anyhow, no matter what her name was, but that her name actually was Willamilla, as her own grandmother had informed them. Grandmothers, Daisy and Elsie explained pityingly, are supposed to know the names of their own grandchildren.

Laurence resisted all this information as well as he was able, setting forth his own convictions in the matter, and continuing his argument while they continued theirs, but finally, in desperation, he proposed a compromise.

“Go on an’ _call_ him Willamilla,” he said bitterly, “—if you got to! _I_ doe’ care if you haven’t got any more sense’n to call him Willamilla when his real name’s Willie Miller an’ his own gran’mother says so! _I_’m goin’ to call him Willie Miller till I die; only for heavenses’ sake, hush up!”

The ladies declined to do as he suggested; whereupon he withdrew from the dispute, and while they talked on, deriding as well as instructing him, he leaned upon the gate and looked gloomily at the ground. However, at intervals, he formed with his lips, though soundlessly, the stubborn words, “His name’s Willie Miller!”

“Oh, I tell you what’d be lovely!” Daisy cried. “Maybe she knows how to _walk_! Let’s put her down and see—and if she doesn’t know how already, why, we can teach her!”

Elsie gladly fell in with her friend’s idea, and together they endeavoured to place Willamilla upon her feet on the ground. In this they were confronted with insuperable difficulties: Willamilla proved unable to comprehend their intentions; and although Daisy knelt and repeatedly placed the small feet in position, the experiment was wholly unsuccessful. Nevertheless the experimenters, not at all discouraged, continued it with delight, for they _played_ that Willamilla was walking. They heaped praises upon her.

“My darling baby!” Daisy cried. “Doesn’t she walk _beautiful_?”

“The precious little love!” Elsie echoed. “She just walks _beautiful_!”

At this the gloomy person in the background permitted himself to sneer. “That ain’t walkin’,” he said.

“It is, too! You doe’ know what you’re talkin’ about!” the chorus of two retorted, not interrupting their procedure.

“He ain’t walkin’,” Laurence maintained.

“She is, too!” said Elsie.

“She’s walkin’ now,” said Daisy. “She’s walkin’ all the time.”

“No, he’s not,” Laurence said. “His feet are sort of curly, and they’re _’way_ too wide apart. I bet there’s somep’m the matter with him.”

“There is not!” The two little girls looked round at him indignantly; for this unwarranted intimation of some structural imperfection roused them. “Shame on you!” Daisy said; and to Willamilla: “Show mamma how beautiful she walks.”

“He can’t do it,” Laurence said obdurately. “I bet there _is_ somep’m the matter with him.”

“There is _not_!”

“Yes, sir,” said Laurence, and he added, with conviction: “His legs ain’t fixed on him right.”

“Shame on you, Laurence Coy!”

But Laurence persisted in his view.

“Listen!” he said, arguing. “Look at _my_ legs. Look at anybody’s legs that can walk. Well, are they fixed on ’em the way _his_ are?”

“Yes, they are!” Daisy returned sharply. “Only hers are fixed on better than yours!”

“They ain’t,” said Laurence. “Mine are fixed on like other people’s, and his are—well, they’re terrable!”

“Oh, isn’t he tiresome?” Elsie said pettishly. “Do be quiet about your ole legs!”

“Yes, _do_!” said Daisy; and then she jumped up, a new idea lighting her eyes. “_I_ tell you what let’s do,” she cried. “Let’s put her back in the wagon, an’ play we’re takin’ a walk on Sunday with our baby an’ all the family.”

“How’ll we play it?” Elsie asked.

“Well, _I_’ll be the mamma and push the wagon,” Daisy said excitedly. “Elsie, you be some lady that’s visitin’ us, an’ sort of walk along with us, an’——”

“No,” Elsie interrupted. “_I_ want to be the mamma and push the wagon, an’ _you_ be some lady that’s visitin’ _us_.”

Daisy looked a little annoyed, but she compromised. “Well, we’ll go a long walk, and I’ll be the mamma the first block, an’ then the next block you can be the mamma, and I’ll be the lady that’s visitin’ us, an’ then the next block it’ll be my turn again.”

“All right,” said Elsie. “What’ll we have Laurence be?”

“We’ll have him be the father.”

Laurence frowned; the idea was rather distasteful to him, and for some reason a little embarrassing. “Listen!” he said. “What do I haf to do?”

“Oh, just walk along and kind of talk an’ everything.”

“Well——” he said uncertainly; then he brightened a little. “I’ll be smokin’ cigars,” he said.

“All right, you can.” And having placed Willamilla in the wagon, Daisy grasped the handle, pushing the vehicle before her. Laurence put a twig in his mouth, puffing elaborately; Elsie walked beside Willamilla; and so the procession moved—Hossifer, still in a mood of indecision, following at a varying distance. And Daisy sang her lullaby as they went.

This singing of hers had an unfavourable effect upon Laurence. For a few minutes after they started he smoked his twig with a little satisfaction and had a slight enjoyment in the thought that he was the head of a family—but something within him kept objecting to the game; he found that really he did not like it. He bore it better on the second and fourth blocks, for Elsie was the mother then, but he felt a strong repulsion when Daisy assumed that relation. He intensely disliked being the father when she was the mother, and he was reluctant to have anybody see him serving in that capacity. Daisy’s motherhood was aggressive; she sang louder and louder, and even without the singing the procession attracted a great deal of attention from pedestrians. Laurence felt that Daisy’s music was in bad taste, especially as she had not yet pulled up her stocking.

She made up the tune, as well as the words, of her lullaby; the tune held beauty for no known ears except her own and these were the words:

“Oh, my da-ar-luh-un baby, My-y lit-tull baby! Go to sleep! Go to _slee_-heep! Oh, my dear lit-_tull_ baby! My baby, my dar-luh-un bay-bee, My bay-bee, my bay-_hay_-bee!”

As she thus soothed the infant, who naturally slumbered not, with Daisy’s shrill voice so near, some people on the opposite side of the street looked across and laughed; and this caused a blush of mortification to spread over the face of the father.

“Listen!” he remonstrated. “You don’t haf to make all that noise.”

She paid no attention but went on singing.

“Listen!” said Laurence nervously. “Anyways, you don’t haf to open your mouth so wide when you sing, do you? It looks terrable!”

She opened it even wider and sang still louder:

“My lit-tull baby, my da-ar-_luh_-un _bay_-bee! My _bay_-bee! My bay-_hay_-bee!”

“Oh, my!” Laurence said, and he retired to the rear; whereupon Hossifer gave him a look and fell back a little farther. “Listen!” Laurence called to Daisy. “You scared the dog!”

Daisy stopped singing and glanced back over her shoulder. “I did not!” she said. “You scared her yourself.”

“_Who?_” Laurence advanced to the side of the wagon, staring incredulously. “Who you talkin’ about?”

“She was walkin’ along nice only a little way behind us,” Daisy said, “until you went near her.”

“I went near _who_?” Laurence asked, looking very much disturbed. “_Who_ was walkin’ along nice?”

“Hossifer was. You said _I_ scared her, and all the time she——”

“Listen!” said Laurence, breathing rapidly. “I won’t stand it. This dog isn’t a girl!”

“Hossifer’s a girl’s name,” said Daisy placidly. “I bet you never heard of a boy by that name in your life!”

“Well, what if I never?”

“Well,” said Daisy authoritatively, “that proves it. Hossifer’s a girl’s name and you just the same as said so yourself. Elsie, didn’t he say Hossifer isn’t a boy’s name, an’ doesn’t that prove Hossifer’s a girl?”

“Yes, it does,” Elsie returned with decision.

Laurence looked at them; then he shook his head. “Oh, _my_!” he said morosely, for these two appeared set upon allowing him no colleagues or associates whatever, and he felt himself at the end of his resources.

Daisy began to sing again at once.

“Oh, my dar-lun lit-_tull_ bay-hay-_bee_-hee!” she sang; and she may have been too vehement for Willamilla, who had thus far remained remarkably placid under her new circumstances; Willamilla began to cry.

She began in a mild way, with a whimper, inaudible on account of the lullaby; then she slightly increased her protest, making use of a voice like the tinnier tones of a light saxophone; and having employed this mild mechanism for some time, without securing any relief from the shrillness that bothered her, she came to the conclusion that she was miserable. Now, she was of this disposition: once she arrived at such a conclusion, she remained at it, and nothing could convey to her mind that altered conditions had removed what annoyed her, until she became so exhausted by the protraction of her own protests that she slept, forgot and woke to a new life.

She marked the moment of her decision, this afternoon, by the utterance of a wail that rose high over the singing; she lifted up her voice and used the full power of lungs and throat to produce such a sound that even the heart of the father was disquieted, while the mamma and the visiting lady at once flung themselves on their knees beside the wagon.

“Whassa _matta_? Whassa _matta_?” Daisy and Elsie inquired some dozens of times, and they called Willamilla a “peshus baby” even oftener, but were unable to quiet her. Indeed, as they shouted their soothing endearments, her tears reached a point almost torrential, and she beat the coverlet with her small fat hands.

“He’s mad about somep’m, I guess,” the father observed, looking down upon her. “Or else he’s got a spasm, maybe.”

“She hasn’t either,” Daisy said. “She’ll stop in a minute.”

“Well, it might not be spasms,” Laurence said. “But I bet whatever it is, it happened from all that singin’.”

Daisy was not pleased with his remark. “I’ll thank you not to be so kinely complimentary, Mister Laurence Coy!” she said, and she took up Willamilla in her arms, and rather staggeringly began to walk to and fro with her, singing:

“Oh, my peshus litt-_tull_ bay-_hay_-bee-hee!”

Elsie walked beside her, singing too, while Willamilla beat upon the air with desperate hands and feet, closed her effervescent eyes as tightly as she could, opened her mouth till the orifice appeared as the most part of her visage, and allowed the long-sustained and far-reaching ululations therefrom to issue. Laurence began to find his position intolerable.

“For heavenses’ sakes!” he said. “If this keeps up much longer, _I_’m goin’ _home_. Everybody’s a-lookin’ at us all up an’ down the street! Whyn’t you quit singin’ an’ give him a chance to get over whatever’s the matter with him?”

“Well, why don’t you do somep’m to help stop her from cryin’, yourself?” Elsie asked crossly.

“Well, I will,” he promised, much too rashly. “I’d stop him in a minute if I had my way.”

“All right,” Daisy said unexpectedly, halting with Willamilla just in front of him. “Go on an’ stop her, you know so much!”

“He’ll stop when _I_ tell him to,” Laurence said, in the grim tone his father sometimes used, and with an air of power and determination, he rolled up the right sleeve of his shirtwaist, exposing the slender arm as far as the elbow. Then he shook his small fist in Willamilla’s face.

“You quit your noise!” he said sternly. “You hush up! Hush up this minute! Hush _opp_!”

Willamilla abated nothing.

“Didn’t you hear me tell you to hush up?” Laurence asked her fiercely. “You goin’ to _do_ it?” And he shook his fist at her again.

Upon this, Willamilla seemed vaguely to perceive something personal to herself in his gesture, and to direct her own flagellating arms as if to beat at his approaching fist.

“Look out!” Laurence said threateningly. “Don’t you try any o’ that with _me_, Mister!”

But the mulatto baby’s squirmings were now too much for Daisy; she staggered, and in fear of dropping the lively burden, suddenly thrust it into Laurence’s arms.

“Here!” she gasped. “I’m ’most worn out! Take her!”

“Oh, golly!” Laurence said.

“Don’t _drop_ her!” both ladies screamed. “Put her back in the wagon.”

Obeying them willingly for once, he turned to the wagon to replace Willamilla therein; but as he stooped, he was forced to pause and stoop no farther. Hossifer had stationed himself beside the wagon and made it clear that he would not allow Willamilla to be replaced. He growled; his upper lip quivered in a way that exhibited almost his whole set of teeth as Laurence stooped, and when Laurence went round to the other side of the wagon, and bent over it with his squirming and noisy bundle, Hossifer followed, and repeated the demonstration. He heightened its eloquence, in fact, making feints and little jumps, and increasing the visibility of his teeth, as well as the poignancy of his growling. Thus menaced, Laurence straightened up and moved backward a few steps, while his two friends, some distance away, kept telling him, with unreasonable insistence, to do as they had instructed him.

“Put her in the wagon, and come _on_!” they called. “We got to go _back_! It’s after three _o’clock_! Come _on_!”

Laurence explained the difficulty in which he found himself. “He won’t let me,” he said.

“Who won’t?” Daisy asked, coming nearer.

“This dog. He won’t let me put him back in the wagon; he almost bit me when I tried it. Here!” And he tried to restore Willamilla to Daisy. “You take her an’ put her in.”

But Daisy, retreating, emphatically declined—which was likewise the course adopted by Elsie when Laurence approached her. Both said that Hossifer “must _want_” Laurence to keep Willamilla, for thus they interpreted Hossifer’s conduct.

“Well, I _won’t_ keep her,” Laurence said hotly. “I don’t expect to go deaf just because some old dog don’t want her in the wagon! I’m goin’ to slam her down on the sidewalk and let her lay there! I’m gettin’ mighty tired of all this.”

But when he moved to do as he threatened, and would have set Willamilla upon the pavement, the unreasonable Hossifer again refused permission. He placed himself close to Laurence, growling loudly, displaying his teeth, bristling, poising dangerously, and Laurence was forced to straighten himself once more without having deposited the infant, whom he now hated poisonously.

“My _good_nuss!” he said desperately.

“Don’t you see?” Daisy cried, and her tone was less sympathetic than triumphant. “It’s just the way we said; Hossifer _wants_ you to keep her!”

Elsie agreed with her, and both seemed pleased with themselves for having divined Hossifer’s intentions so readily, though as a matter of fact they were entirely mistaken in this intuitional analysis. Hossifer cared nothing at all about Laurence’s retaining Willamilla; neither was the oyster-coloured dog’s conduct so irrational as the cowed and wretched Laurence thought it. In the first place, Hossifer was never quite himself away from an alley; he had been upon a strain all that afternoon. Then, when the elderly coloured woman had forbidden him to accompany her, and he found himself with strangers, including a white boy, and away from everything familiar, except Willamilla, in whom he had never taken any personal interest, he became uneasy and fell into a querulous mood. His uneasiness naturally concerned itself with the boy, and was deepened by two definite attempts of this boy to approach him.

When the family Sunday walk was undertaken, Hossifer followed Willamilla and the wagon; for of course he realized that this was one of those things about which there can be no question: one does them, and that’s all. But his thoughts were constantly upon the boy, and he resolved to be the first to act if the boy made the slightest hostile gesture. Meanwhile, his nerves were unfavourably affected by the strange singing, and they were presently more upset by the blatancies of Willamilla. Her wailing acted unpleasantly upon the sensitive apparatus of his ear—the very thing that made him so strongly dislike tinny musical instruments and brass bands. And then, just as he was feeling most disorganized, he saw the boy stoop. Hossifer did not realize that Laurence stooped because he desired to put Willamilla into the wagon; Hossifer did not connect Willamilla with the action at all. He saw only that the boy stooped. Now, why does a boy stoop? He stoops to pick up something to throw at a dog. Hossifer made up his mind not to let Laurence stoop.