Part 1

BAMBI

by Marjorie Benton Cooke

Illustrated by Mary Greene Blumenschein

Originally Published in 1914

DEDICATION

TO BAMBI

With thanks to her for being Herself!

M.B.C.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

She saw Jarvis before the curtain, making a first-night speech.

Bambi fluttered the joy-bringing letter above her head and circled the breakfast-room in a whirl of happiness.

"Good evening, Mrs. New York, and all you people out there! We're here, Jarvis and I."

"Well, believe me, that high-brow stuff is on the toboggan."

"Tell your husband to put you in a play, and I'll put it on." "Much obliged, I'll tell him. Good morning."

Her tale had the place of honour and was illustrated by James Montgomery Flagg, the supreme desire of every young writer.

"Softlings! Poor softlings!" Jarvis muttered, Bambi's words coming back to him.

"I have got to do something violent, Ardelia. I am going to jerk the stems off of berries, chop the pits out of cherries, and skin peaches."

He taught himself to abandon his old introspective habits during these days on the box.

BAMBI

"Professor James Parkhurst, I consider you a colossal failure as an educator," said Francesca, his daughter, known to friend and family as Bambina, or Bambi for short.

Professor Parkhurst lifted a startled face from his newspaper and surveyed his only child across the breakfast table.

"My dear, what causes this sweeping assertion of my incompetence?"

"I do! I do! Just what did you expect me to do when I grew up?"

"Why, to be happy."

"That's the profession you intended me for? Who's to pay the piper? It's expensive to be happy and also unlucrative."

"I have always expected to support you until your husband claimed that privilege."

"Suppose I want a husband who can't support me?"

"Dear me, that would be unfortunate. It is the first duty of a husband to support his wife."