One
of these mites of humanity would make a man out of your mountain
hermit, resist as he might. They set up a claim on one whether it
exists or not, and one has to allow it, and respond to it at least in
some perfunctory fashion. More than once, as Mr. Man sat silently
near the circle, the chubby Baker baby would fall over his feet, and
he would involuntarily stoop to pick her up, straighten her dress,
and soothe her woe. There was no hearty pleasure in his service even
now. Nobody was certain that he felt any pleasure at all. His
helpfulness was not spontaneous; it seemed a kind of reflex action, a
survival of some former state of mind or heart; for he did his
favours in a dream, nor heard any thanks: yet the elixir was working
in his veins.
'He is dreadfully in the way,' grumbled Edith; 'he is more ever-
present than my ardent Russian.'
'So long as he insists on coming, let us make him supply the paternal
element,' suggested Rhoda. 'It may be a degrading confession, but we
could afford to part with several women here if we could only secure
a really fatherly man. The Solitary cannot indulge in any day-dreams
or trances, if we accept him as the patriarch of the institution.'
Whereupon they boldly asked him, on his subsequent visits, to go upon
errands, and open barrels of apples, and order intoxicated gentlemen
off the steps, and mend locks and window-fastenings, and sharpen
lead-pencils, and put on coal, and tell the lady in the rear that her
parrot interfered with their morning prayers by shrieking the hymns
in impossible keys.
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