XIII

THE PINK OF PERFECTION

That was the only trouble with Allan Carey’s little daughter Julia, aged thirteen; she was, and always had been, the pink of perfection.  As a baby she had always been exemplary, eating heartily and sleeping soundly.  When she felt a pin in her flannel petticoat she deemed it discourteous to cry, because she knew that her nurse had at least tried to dress her properly.  When awake, her mental machinery moved slowly and without any jerks.  As to her moral machinery, the angels must have set it going at birth and planned it in such a way that it could neither stop nor go wrong.  It was well meant, of course, but probably the angels who had the matter in charge were new, young, inexperienced angels, with vague ideas of human nature and inexact knowledge of God’s intentions; because a child that has no capability of doing the wrong thing will hardly be able to manage a right one; not one of the big sort, anyway.

At four or five years old Julia was always spoken of as “such a good little girl.”  Many a time had Nancy in early youth stamped her foot and cried:  “Don’t talk about Julia!  I will not hear about Julia!” for she was always held up as a pattern of excellence.  Truth to tell she bored her own mother terribly; but that is not strange, for by a curious freak of nature, Mrs. Allan Carey was as flighty and capricious and irresponsible and gay and naughty as Julia was steady, limited, narrow, conventional, and dull; but the flighty mother passed out of the Carey family life, and Julia, from the age of five onward, fell into the charge of a pious, unimaginative governess, instead of being turned out to pasture with a lot of frolicsome young human creatures; so at thirteen she had apparently settled—­hard, solid, and firm—­into a mould.  She had smooth fair hair, pale blue eyes, thin lips, and a somewhat too plump shape for her years.  She was always tidy and wore her clothes well, laying enormous stress upon their material and style, this trait in her character having been added under the fostering influence of the wealthy and fashionable Gladys Ferguson.  At thirteen, when Julia joined the flock of Carey chickens, she had the air of belonging to quite another order of beings.  They had been through a discipline seldom suffered by “only children.”  They had had to divide apples and toys, take turns at reading books, and learn generally to trot in double harness.  If Nancy had a new dress at Christmas, Kathleen had a new hat in the spring.  Gilbert heard the cry of “Low bridge!” very often after Kathleen appeared on the scene, and Kathleen’s ears, too, grew well accustomed to the same phrase after Peter was born.

“Julia never did a naughty thing in her life, nor spoke a wrong word,” said her father once, proudly.