Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 28
A STRANGE situation existed in the nursery. Alice sitting like Patience on the Monument, the savage and suspicious Sara putting doll after doll to bed, and Laurie making protest by opening and shutting bureau drawers and putting away clothes with nerve-racking and unnecessary emphasis.
"I am of no use in this nursery," Alice thought. This emphatic putting-to-bed might be hastened by her going, but she was not long out of the room before sounds of conflict filled the air. Protests and screams from Sara mingled with Laurie's shrill expostulations. Alice hastened to the scene of strife.
"When it comes to putting furniture to bed!" Laurie cried to Alice, "when it comes to undoing my own pocket handkerchiefs to make sheets for dolls' furniture, and the putting-to-bed of automobiles that wind up, and putting-to-bed even toy tea sets and cups and saucers, and maybe it'll be blocks next thing, something has got to stop, Mis' Marcey!"
"I'm not going to put blocks to bed! Just automobiles and furniture!" An added fury shown in Sara's eye. She was possessed! Reasonable and sane, or not, she must have bedding for dolls' furniture and for automobiles.
"You're not going to give in to her, are you, Mis' Marcey?" Laurie demanded, witheringly.
There are a few young mothers who do not quail before the cool common sense of their maids.
"They're cold!" screeched Sara, "they want beds like anything!"
"There'll be no end to this," warned Laurie.
"They've got to be covered up! They'll catch cold and die!" screamed Sara. There had rushed over Sara one of her impassioned and irresistible desires. These desires would come swiftly and engulf Sara, leaving her deaf to the pleadings of common sense, deaf to reason. Some of the things she wanted you could understand; others one failed to fathom. The only thing concerning which one could be sure was the reality of these desires in Sara's heart.
"Of course I could sit down and wait till midnight if need be," came the voice of the sensible Laurie.
Sara was rapidly covering up pieces of furniture.
"You give Sara the rein, Mis' Marcey, and she won't take an ell, she'll take a square mile and a half, she will!"
"They've got to be put to bed," screamed Sara in her tense, possessed voice.
"You're through now, Sara," said Alice.
"There's just one more thing," Sara insisted, "one more thing; it's got to be put to bed! It's got to be made warm! It's got to go to sleep!"
From beneath the bed she fished out a mechanical toy.
"This'll happen night after night," warned Laurie. "There'll come times when Sara won't get to bed at all, not before morning!"
Sara had rifled the waste-paper basket of a newspaper and made a large, warm-looking bundle. Now she sighed with relief.
"They're all done up for the night," she said. She surveyed her work proudly.
Ranged almost the whole length of the nursery floor was a foundling asylum of Kewpies and a long string of miscellaneous-shaped bundles. Sara, her task performed, was now ready for bed. She kissed her mother, she kissed Laurie, she blew kisses to her handiwork, and even stretched herself as one who has accomplished great things. There was that about her which made one feel not one second sooner could she have been reft from her toil without great violence. But Sara was too magnanimous to show any triumph over Laurie. Once ready, she went to bed like an angel.