I Take a Country House

The newspaper accounts have been so garbled and incomplete--one of them
mentioned me but once, and then only as the tenant at the time the
thing happened--that I feel it my due to tell what I know. Mr.
Jamieson, the detective, said himself he could never have done without
me, although he gave me little enough credit, in print.

I shall have to go back several years--thirteen, to be exact--to start
my story. At that time my brother died, leaving me his two children.
Halsey was eleven then, and Gertrude was seven. All the
responsibilities of maternity were thrust upon me suddenly; to perfect
the profession of motherhood requires precisely as many years as the
child has lived, like the man who started to carry the calf and ended
by walking along with the bull on his shoulders. However, I did the
best I could. When Gertrude got past the hair-ribbon age, and Halsey
asked for a scarf-pin and put on long trousers--and a wonderful help
that was to the darning.--I sent them away to good schools. After
that, my responsibility was chiefly postal, with three months every
summer in which to replenish their wardrobes, look over their lists of
acquaintances, and generally to take my foster-motherhood out of its
nine months' retirement in camphor.

I missed the summers with them when, somewhat later, at boarding-school
and college, the children spent much of their vacations with friends.
Gradually I found that my name signed to a check was even more welcome
than when signed to a letter, though I wrote them at stated intervals.
But when Halsey had finished his electrical course and Gertrude her
boarding-school, and both came home to stay, things were suddenly
changed. The winter Gertrude came out was nothing but a succession of
sitting up late at night to bring her home from things, taking her to
the dressmakers between naps the next day, and discouraging ineligible
youths with either more money than brains, or more brains than money.
Also, I acquired a great many things: to say lingerie for
under-garments, "frocks" and "gowns" instead of dresses, and that
beardless sophomores are not college boys, but college men. Halsey
required less personal supervision, and as they both got their mother's
fortune that winter, my responsibility became purely moral. Halsey
bought a car, of course, and I learned how to tie over my bonnet a gray
baize veil, and, after a time, never to stop to look at the dogs one
has run down. People are apt to be so unpleasant about their dogs.