Part 1 (1/2)
Three People.
by Pansy.
CHAPTER I.
SOME BABIES.
”Tie the sash a very little looser, nurse, and give the loops a more graceful fall; there--_so_. Now he's a beauty! every inch of him.” And Mrs. Hastings moved backward a few steps in order to get the full effect.
A beauty he was, certainly; others beside his mother would have admitted that. What baby fresh from a bath, and robed in the daintiest and most perfect of baby toilets, with tightly curling rings of brown hair covering the handsome head; with great sparkling, dancing blue eyes, and laughing rosebud mouth; with hands and feet and body strung on invisible wires, and quivering with life and glee, was ever other than a beauty?
The whole house was in commotion in honor of the fact that Master Pliny L. Hastings, only son and heir of the great Pliny Hastings, Senior, of Hastings' Hall, had ”laughed and cried, and nodded and winked,” through the entire s.p.a.ce of three hundred and sixty-five days and nights, and actually reached the first anniversary of his birthday.
A remarkable boy was Pliny Hastings. He didn't know yet that his father was a millionaire, but he must have surmised it, for, as far back as he could remember, his bits of sleeves had been looped with real pearls; rosewood and lace and silk and down had united to make his tiny bed; he had bitten his first tooth through on a sphere of solid gold--and all the wonderful and improbable contrivances for royal babyhood that could be bought or imagined, met together in that grand house on the Avenue for this treasured bit of humanity.
On this particular day baby was out in all his glory; he had made the circuit of the great parlors, stopping on his way to be tossed toward the ceiling, in the arms of first one uncle and then another. He had been kissed and cuddled by all the aunties and cousins, until his cheeks were rosy with triumph; and, finally, he had been carried, shouting with glee, high up on his father's shoulder, down to the dining-room, and occupied the seat of honor at the long table, where he crowed, and laughed, and clapped his hands over every plum that found its way into his dainty mouth. This conduct was interspersed, however, by sundry dives and screams after the coffee urn and the ice pitcher, and various unattainable things--for there were unattainable things, even for Pliny Hastings. Oh, the times and times in his young life that he had cried for the beautiful round moon, and got it not! And even gaslight and firelight had hitherto eluded his eager grasp; but he had learned no lessons from his failures, and still pitched and dived after impossibilities in the most insane fas.h.i.+on. To-day he looked with indifference on the gold-lined silver cup bearing his name and age, and wanted the great carving fork instead. He cared not a whit that the sparkling wine was poured, and gla.s.ses were touched, and toasts drank on his account; but a touch of wisdom must have come over his baby brain, for he made a sudden dash at his father's gla.s.s, sending the red wine right and left, and s.h.i.+vering the frail gla.s.s to fragments; he did more than that, he promptly seized on one of the sharpest bits, and thereby cut a long crooked gash in the sweet chubby finger, and was finally borne, shrieking and struggling, from the room, his little heart filled with mingled feelings of terror and rage. So much for Baby Hastings and his birthday.
In a neat white house, no more than a mile away from this great mansion, there was another baby. It was just when Pliny Hastings was hurried away to the nursery that this baby's mother folded away papers, and otherwise tidied up her bit of a nursery, then pushed a little sewing chair in front of her work table, and paused ere she sat down to give another careful tuck to the blanketed bundle, which was cuddled in the great rocking chair, fast asleep. Then she gathered the doubled up fist into her hand, and caressed it softly, while she murmured: ”Bless his precious little heart! he takes a splendid nap for his birthday, so he does.”
”Ben,” this to the gentleman who was lounging in another rocker, reading the paper, ”does it seem possible that Bennie is a year old to-day? I declare, Ben, we ought to have got him a present for his birthday.”
The father looked up from his paper with a good-natured laugh. ”Seems to me he's rather youthful to begin on that tack, isn't he?”
”Oh, Ben, no! I want every one of his birthdays to be so nice and pleasant. Do, papa, come here and see how nice he looks, with his hair all in a curl.”
Thus appealed to, Mr. Phillips came over to the arm-chair, and together they stood looking down on the treasured bit of flesh and blood.
”Our eldest born,” the mother said, softly.
”And youngest, too, for the matter of that,” answered Mr. Phillips, gaily.
His wife laughed. ”Ben, there isn't the least bit of sentiment in you, is there? Now they are having a wonderful time to-day in the grand corner house on the Avenue, the Hastings' house, you know, and it's all because their baby is a year old to-day, and he isn't a bit nicer than ours.”
”Their baby's father is worth a million.”
”I don't care if he is worth a billion, that don't make their baby any sweeter. Say, Ben, I just wish, for the fun of it, we had some little cunning thing for his birthday present.”
Mr. Phillips seemed to be very much amused. ”Well,” he said, still laughing, ”Which shall it be, a razor or a jack-knife?”
His wife actually shuddered. ”Ben!” she said, with a reproachful face, ”how _can_ you say such dreadful things? What if he should grow up and commit suicide?”
”What if I had a boy, and he should grow to be a man, and another man should tread on his toes, and he should knock the other man down, and the other man should die, and they should hang my boy,” rattled off Mr.
Phillips in anything but a grave tone.
”Little woman, that's what I should call looking into the future, isn't it?”
A knock at the door interrupted them, and Roxie, the tidy little maid of all work, who had been out for an afternoon, appeared to them, talking rapidly.