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.
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