You can't imagine anything more amusing than the satisfaction with which Felicia Day awoke. The early sun was streaming in her eyes. She rubbed them drowsily and sat up in the middle of the narrow humpy bed. At the foot of the bed Babiche awoke too, yawning and stretching beautifully, reflexing her droll puppy body and wagging her wee feathery tail.
On the floor the russet bag gaped open where Felicia had dumped it the night before; her clothes lay in a limp heap beside the window. But the clear spring air, deliciously salty smelling to the woman who had been living inland so long, made her breathe deeply.
"Ah! Babiche!" she murmured, smiling at the smudgy spot on the wall, "What a naughty child I used to be!" She had a naive pride in this evidence of her early wickedness. But a moment later she was frowning, her eyes fixed on the grimy woodwork.
"What unspeakably lazy servants I must have! I shall send them away at once! Just as soon as that woman has brought my breakfast I shall say to her,
"'You are an abom-in-able housekeeper, pack your bags and go!'"
She had heard Mademoiselle D'Ormy send a servant away once. It gave a splendid sense of superiority to think that she was going to do it herself this time. She pulled her travel-stiff body over the edge of the bed, and grimacing as she swung her pavement-sore feet to the floor, she wrapped the lovely old dressing-gown about her and opened the door into the hall. She could not think of any other way in which to summon a servant whose name she did not know and so she whistled clearly as she sometimes did when she wanted to call Bele from the farther end of the orchard.
The house seemed filled with sounds, mutterings, babblings, little cries, the heavy whirr of the sewing machines, the splintering clatter of Tony, who was chopping his wares by the basement door—it seemed impregnated with odors, smudgy, burning, unsavory, smoky smells. She whistled again.
An unkempt head, a man's head, was thrust from the nursery door, in the quick glance with which she looked at him and beyond him she seemed to see a score of persons. There were not really so many of them, merely a slovenly woman who was pedaling the sewing machine with a baby tumbling at her feet, an eight-year-old who sat on the window ledge pulling bastings while a half-grown girl cooked something on a stove that had been propped in front of the fireplace.
Zeb's phrase—"filthy dirty heathen" trembled on Felicia's lips, her eyes burned hotly. She grew furiously angry. Her breast was heaving, her bare foot tapped impatiently on the chilly floor, but the man slammed the door before she could speak.
She stepped resolutely into the hall, she whistled again, this time imperiously.
No one answered.
She crossed to the bathroom beside the nursery. She was grimly determined now, she would bathe herself and dress and go down to the kitchen and speak at once to the servant. The bathroom door was slightly open but the skylight was so dusty that she could scarcely see. She put down her hand to turn the faucet and drew back in dismay. Her tub was already filled—with coal!
And behind her a voice ejaculated,
"You no taka mine fires! Get out!"
Felicia did "get out," speeding so recklessly back to Mademoiselle's old room that she was breathless as she shut the door behind her and leaned against it laughing weakly.
"Oh! Oh! I know it is all a dream! It's too ridiculous to be true!"
She found enough water in a pitcher on the table to bathe her face. She sat on the edge of the bed thinking hard as she brushed her hair.
"It is not a dream"—she shuddered, "The back yard is real—even with all the rubbish there, the back yard is real! The gate is there—the first thing I shall make them clean will be the back yard—after all, it won't be so difficult as my garden in the woods. I shall not have to wait to find the pattern, I know exactly how it all belongs. And I know that about this whole house. I shall"—she grew more determined, "make it all as it was before. First I shall put all these filthy dirty heathen out—it will be exactly like making the garden—only I shall have people pulled out instead of weeds—they are all like weeds, these filthy dirty people—I am not afraid of weeds."
But all the same, when she was dressed and had begun the perilous journey downward, she found herself very much afraid of the "weeds" that she encountered on her way to the tailor's missus.
Nor did she issue victoriously as she had planned from her attempt to send the tailor's missus away.
The tailor's missus stood her ground stoutly, she even forced Felicia to give her three dollars for room rent from Louisa's purse; the woman's awe of the night before had departed, she moaned strange things about her children's starving, she reiterated her absolute lack of belief that Felicia owned the house, she laughed toothlessly over such a thing being possible.
"You tell that to Mister Grady," she scoffed, "Mr. Grady, he is goin' to buy this house, comes the auction next Tuesday—"
Mr. Grady, Felicia discovered, was the rent collector; this fact at last was something to seize upon. If he was the rent collector and it was her house, certainly she could go and collect from him. She learned that he lived across the street, a grimy finger indicated where and she set forth valiantly.
Breakfastless, almost moneyless, her chin in the air, she marched across the street and faced the redoubtable Mr. Grady. He wasn't a bad sort at all, though it was quite evident that he, like the tailor's missus, hadn't the slightest idea that she really owned her house. He rubbed his stubby, sandy chin and hitched his shirt sleeve garter higher,
"I hain't collecting for myself," he assured her, "I only collects for the receiver for the estate—you can see 'im if you like—he's up in th' Temple Bar buildin'." He was so good as to jot down the number of the room for her. She thanked him and departed, leaving him staring after her, scratching his chin more violently than ever.
By noon she stood quietly outside Judge Harlow's door. She presented herself without parley. There was a calm determination about her that reminded him somehow of a fanatic with a great cause. And yet there was a mirthful twinkle in her eyes.
"It's been droll," she began, "I have been trying all day to make persons understand that it's my house. I can't make anybody believe me, not the tailor's missus, nor the rent collector nor the 'receiver for the estate,'" her drawling imitation of the redoubtable Mr. Grady made the Justice smile.
"Oh, you've talked with that scamp, have you?" he flung the door open and pulled out a chair for her.
"I've talked with a great many—scamps"—she caught at new words as delightedly as though they had been new flowers, and he laughed again. She was too absurd, this grotesquely garbed old maid! "I haven't found the Portia Person—" a note of gravity crept into her voice again, "but I'm going to do without him—I have a plan"—she leaned forward excitedly, "I thought it out—it's as good as the pattern of the garden—the reason you have to make me pay fifty dollars for— violating that Tenement Law is because there are too many persons in my house, isn't that it?"
He nodded.
"Then," she decided triumphantly, "it's quite simple. We must just put them out!"
"Miss Daniel come to judgment!" he congratulated her.
They talked quite seriously then. The matter of identification was not really droll, for there was literally no one to vouch for Felicia Day. He found it difficult to explain to her that while he did not in the least doubt her assertion that she was Felicia Day she would have to prove, legally, that she was.
If the "receiver for the estate" could find any of the papers that Felicia had signed for Mr. Burrel of course her signature would help, (he called a stenographer and wrote for a letter from the country doctor,) he explained regretfully that until she could prove that she was the person she claimed to be she could not actually take possession of the house.
"Then you can't 'actually' make me pay anything—those fines or taxes, until you prove that I'm the person who owes them—" She came back at him so quickly that she took his breath away.
"Again Miss Daniel comes to judgment!" he teased her. She put him in an extraordinary good humor with her alertness. Her persistence and her indomitable courage were such futile weapons against the armor of the law that they seemed pathetic, but her droll faith in herself and her absurd comments about the persons with whom she had been talking made him want to laugh as one laughs at a precocious child.
She left as abruptly as she had come, tucking Babiche under her arm in a deliciously matter-of-fact way.
"Good morning, Miss Day," he called after her.
She paused, she blushed furiously, she had forgotten Mademoiselle's manners. But she made up for it. She dropped him the most amusing curtsy with an upward glance like that of the one-eyed scrub woman who had been cleaning the corridor.
"Good marnin', yer Honor!" she groaned exactly like that rheumatic soul. He laughed silently, his head thrown back on his shoulders. How could he know that she couldn't help "pretending" that she was everybody she listened to!
"And she looks like a little old tramp," he recounted at luncheon to a friend, "Most extraordinary person, one minute she puts a lump in your throat—you're so sorry for her you could curse, and the next—Lordy! the next minute you wonder at her impertinence—it's not exactly impertinence either,—it's absolute frankness."
"No manners, eh?" suggested his friend.
"No manners at all. A manner," said the Justice neatly.
Back in the little hall room she sat dizzily on the edge of the bed and divided the last of Margot's dry sandwiches with Babiche. They were both ravenously hungry. Felicia turned the few coins out of Louisa's old purse and contemplated them. Wherever she had turned in these two busy days she had had to pay, she was perpetually asked for money.
And quite surely she must have some more. She couldn't ask Margot, and the "receiver for the estate" would give her none. She stared at the smug faced shepherdesses.
"Where," she thought, "Do persons get money?"
The shepherdesses smiled back stupidly.
Babiche answered her really. Having all there was to eat the wee dog settled herself uncomfortably on the thin pillow.
"If I knew where the Wheezy was I'd have her make you a cushion—oh! oh! Babiche! How stupid I've been! The Wheezy got money, Mademoiselle used to give it to her from Maman's purse, two dollars every day—for sewing—why, Babiche, I can sew beautifully—much better than the Wheezy!"
It was a delightful moment, a self-reliant, decisive moment. Her eyes sparkled, she caught up the ugly bonnet, she could hardly hurry fast enough to find The Woman's Exchange and Employment Agency. She even remembered the sign in the window.
"Applications for work received Tuesdays and Fridays." She was so glad that it was Friday that she could have whistled. So down the stairs they went again, the little dog and mistress, and straight around the corner, past the old church, there they stopped for Felicia to read what she hadn't stopped to read before,
"THIS PROPERTY FOR SALE OR TO LET SUITABLE FOR GARAGE OR MOVING PICTURES APPLY YOUR OWN BROKER"
She stumbled around uncollected garbage, she waited impatiently for impudent children to move out of her way, she thrilled with rage at the sordid world about her.
"That pattern of it all is gone—I can't see how it was unless I close my eyes," she thought.
But when she came to the faded sign "WOMAN'S EXCHANGE AND EMPLOYMENT AGENCY" she smiled. For that at least was exactly as it had been save that it looked tinier and dingier than it had in the old days. She opened the iron-grilled door, her eager heart anticipating the tinkling jangle of the spring bell at the rear, and when the shadowy curtains parted and a grizzled head, surmounted by gold-rimmed spectacles tucked above a worried forehead appeared, Felicia could have cried out with delight.
For there was the Disagreeable Walnut, limping more painfully than she had used to limp, blinking more uncertainly than she had used to blink. Her rasping voice came thinner and more peevish than it had twenty years ago but she called out just the same,
"Well, what's your business?"
Felicia listened dreamily; she seemed to be absorbing the whole shop, the dusty shelves lined with useless "fancy" work, into whose fashioning no fancy at all had crept; the cracked show counters filled with pasty china daubed with violets and cross-eyed cupids,—propped up rakishly in the very front of the dustiest, most battered case of all the fat string dolly leaned despondently and smiled her red floss smile.
"Oh, how you've lasted!" breathed Felicia.
"What?" shrilled the Disagreeable Walnut, blushing under her shriveled skin.
"I mean—the little person made of string—" murmured Felicia abashed. "I saw her here—when we came for The Wheezy—Mademoiselle D'Ormy and I."
The Disagreeable Walnut snorted.
"Oh, that Mademoiselle D'Ormy," she squinted through her adjusted glasses, her shaking, purple-veined hands fumbling with the silk that was wound around the bows to protect her thin old temples, "She hain't been here this long while, have you seen her?"
"Do you know me?" demanded Felicia stepping very close.
"Don't know as I do—yet it seems like I did too—you hain't been here in a long while, have ye?"
"Don't you remember—I lived in that same house where Mademoiselle D'Ormy stayed—she brought me in here when I was a little girl—when we came to get the Wheezy to sew—"
The Disagreeable Walnut shook her head.
"I never knew anybody named Wheezy."
"The Wheezy was fat—" Felicia puffed out her chest, tilted her chin downward and hunched up her shoulders like the Wheezy. She cleared her throat and panted and let her breath come sighingly through her pursed lips, "She couldn't see why under the shining canopy the Major had her make c-cushions for the dogs—"
The shop keeper nodded her recognition of The Wheezy.
"Oh, you mean Sophia Pease—dear! dear!" she wiped her eye glasses tremblingly, "She's been out to the Baptist Home for the Aged this long whiles. Her eyes went back on her—a nice sewer, as nice a sewer as we ever had—dear, dear! I don't know when anybody asked me about Sophia Pease—she made them dolls you was just mentioning—" she motioned toward the disconsolate string toy—"dear, dear! she made them even after she couldn't see for regular sewing—"
"Now can't you remember me?" reiterated Felicia pleadingly.
The Disagreeable Walnut shook her head.
"Can't say as I do—"
"But I am Felice—the little girl who came with Mademoiselle D'Ormy to get Miss Pease—can't you see that I am?"
The old woman's tittering laugh of denial made Felicia want to shake her.
"That child—why you hain't she—she wouldn't be the matter of half your age—you must be thirty-five or forty, hain't ye? She grew up and run away like the rest of her women folks—" she giggled sardonically, "Was a young limb, she was, I used to hear her whistling at them choir boys next door—a young limb—all the girls in that family was man- chasers—the mother run off with the rector's son—younger'n she was— by a good two years I should say, she must ha' been thirty if she was a minute—but pretty—prettier n' her mother—ever see the mother, Miss Trenton—Miss Montrose that was?"
"Did you?" breathed Felicia. "Oh, did you see Grandy's Louisa?"
"Did I ever see her?" the Disagreeable Walnut leaned her sharp elbows on the show case. "I see her when she was a bride—I'd just took charge here then—she was a high-stepper! The Major hadn't a penny when she married him but she had all the Montrose money and she got him—some say as she told him if he'd marry her she'd live on what he earned—but I guess he couldn't have earned the matter of her shoe strings—not the way she dressed—she was stylish and tasty in her dress—and then she eloped—with that lawyer fellow—some says she didn't elope with him, but she went off for some French property her mother had left her—but I dunno—she was an awful high-stepper. All I know is that after she was dead and the Major brought Miss Octavia home—"
"Did you see Maman? Did you?" Felicia could hardly breath, "Did you see Octavia—wasn't she sweet? Wasn't she darling—didn't you love her, love, love her?"
"Too high-stepping!" sniffed the old woman, "Whole lot of 'em was too high-stepping for me—never liked any of 'em—"
"She didn't step at all—" Felicia's anger was rising, "She just stayed in her bed and stayed in her bed—how dare you say you—oh! oh!" Color burned in her pale cheeks, "I won't have you say such things—"
"Well, I hain't quarreling with you about them folks," said the Disagreeable Walnut sententiously, "They're all dead and buried anyhow. And pore Sophia Pease might jes' as well be—mewed up in that Baptist home where her friends, if she's got any, can't see her excepting on Sundays—my stars! I wouldn't go to live in that Home, no sir, I wouldn't—nor I wouldn't want to live at the—"
"Can you tell me," Felicia broke in upon this flood of opinions, "Where I could go to see Miss Pease?"
"I'm telling you—the Baptist Home—"
"I do think she'd know me," Felicia murmured thoughtfully. "I do think she would." She moved toward the door, intent upon trying to see Miss Pease.
But the Disagreeable Walnut, for all that she was old, was quite capable of handling her job. She called petulantly after her retreating caller.
"What was you coming in for—anything you wanted to buy?"
Felicia turned.
"How stupid I am to forget. I came because it was Friday, you know, I wanted to have some work, please. For two dollars a day and lunch."
The shop keeper pulled a dusty ledger toward her.
"Are you registered or new?"
"I—I think I'm new, I'm not registered."
The ledger was pushed around toward her, the shop keeper reached fretfully for the spattered ink bottle.
"By the day or home work?"
"By the day," said Felicia decisively.
"Then sign here," a trembling finger indicated the line.
It was a new page. No one had signed it yet. At the top was printed,
NAME ADDRESS JOB APPLIED FOR DATE Mrs. or Miss.
And Felicia wrote, guiding the rusty pen carefully. Last of all, she wrote just after the printed Miss, in firm letters, "By The Day," and pushed back the book.
The Disagreeable Walnut pursed her lips, she couldn't really see anything through the blur of her glasses.
The bell jangled, a brisk old person, much like the Disagreeable Walnut, save that she looked agreeable, entered breathlessly.
"Sorry I was late," she dumped various bundles on the counter, "How'd you make out, Susan?" She eyed Felicia as she began pulling at her gloves. "Did my sister find what you wanted?"
"She wants work," quavered Susan, considerably less reliant than she'd been a moment before. "I dunno where the work book is. I declare I can't keep track of where you put things, Sarah—is there anybody could use her? She wants sewing."
The brisk person swung the book around glancing at it capably as she removed her hat.
"Oh, you've signed it in the wrong place. You should have put your name there—not the way you were going to work"—her finger rested on the place Felicia had written. "What is your name? Your name isn't Miss By-the-Day is it?" she asked good-humoredly.
"Why, I think it is," Felicia smiled back, "I think it will have to be—it's Day," she added shyly.
"Miss or Mrs.?"
"Miss."
"And what kind of work, please?"
"Like the Wheezy—sewing—for two dollars a day and lunch"—she repeated it like a lesson.
"There's a day a week at 440 Linton Avenue—Mrs. Alden's, perhaps you could go there. Have you references?"
"I don't even know what they are," Miss By-the-Day replied.
The brisk person laughed.
"Well you must have an address, where do you live?"
"In my own house," her chin lifted proudly, "Montrose Place."
"But if you have a house," the interrogator's voice was kindly if her words were severe, "we can't possibly give you work. You see, our work is for persons who have no other means of support, no other ways of making their living."
Felicia's lips quivered.
"I haven't, that's why I came. You see it's all taxes and assessments and fines and—it's so fearfully dirty and I haven't any money"—she held out Louisa's reticule a bit ruefully. "You can see I haven't."
"I see"—the brisk person stepped back to the telephone. She was thoughtful as she waited for her connection. She talked quietly, murmuring things about some one who looked thoroughly responsible. Presently she wrote down an address that she handed to Felicia. "You must be there at eight o'clock in the morning, can you do that, Miss By-the-Day?"
"There's something else I'd like you to write—it's the place where Miss Pease lives—"
"You can't go to see her except Sundays," Miss Sarah cautioned her. "They're strict."
After Felicia had gone the brisk woman straightened things about a bit, humming under her breath.
"Su-san"—she called through the doorway, "haven't we seen that woman somewheres? She looks awful familiar." Miss Susan grunted.
"She tried to make out she knew me, but I dunno—she can't never sew to suit Mis' Freddie Alden and you know she can't—nobody can please young Miss' Alden—old Miss' Alden was bad enough but young Miss' Alden is worse—"
Of her adventures "by-the-day" only Felicia could have "found the pattern." And as in the case of the garden of old, even she was a long time discovering any design in the confusing blur of their outlines. Perhaps it was because each day was like a bit of glass in a child's kaleidoscope, an episode in itself, ugly, irregular and meaningless, until Felicia's rage against life tumbled each piece into position and let them all reflect in quaint order against the clear sweet mirrors of her faith and hope and charity.
Who but Felicia could have shaken beauty from that first unlovely "by- the-day"? Seamstress after seamstress had come and gone in that impossibly selfish household, the meek ones enduring it until they could endure no more, the proud ones hurrying angrily away; competent or incompetent, not one of them had ever been able to please her exacting employer, yet Felicia, mercifully unaware of the heart aches she would endure within, walked staunchly through the iron gates, with "440 Linton Avenue" boldly wrought in filagree upon their stern panels.
The house was set close to the street but wide side yards separated it from its newer neighbors. It was pretentiously ugly with its mansard roof, intricate porches, balconies and bay windows that had evidently been added after the original architectural atrocity had been committed. At her first glance as the pert and frilly maid opened the door it seemed as though the whole house were filled with innumerable elaborate draperies and fat-framed paintings and much stuffed furniture. While she waited for the maid to announce her, her quick ears caught the nervous undertone of the house—the whining voices of children above stairs, the quick clatter of dishes in the far off pantry and a politely peevish voice that was raised as its owner struggled with an imperfect telephone connection.
"—just at my wits' end—both maids have the day out,—the children are off my hands for the day—they're going to be in the pageant—but it is awkward for all that. Uncle Peter's nurse insists that she has to go out and it doesn't leave any one to stay with him. Fred is so unreasonable about our leaving Uncle Peter alone. Of course if the Exchange did send the sewing person to do the mending I could go—only you never can tell whether people like that are honest or not—they often aren't—" The "sewing person" in the overstuffed chair looked straight ahead of her. She shut her lips together and tried desperately not to listen.
"—that's all I can promise—if the sewing person comes and can sit in the hall—I think it would be perfectly horrid if you had to play a three table—if I can't get there in time for luncheon I'll hurry around by half past two—that is if I possibly can."
Her irritable voice was still raised to telephone pitch as she hurried toward her new seamstress. It wasn't until she had ushered Felicia into the draughty angle of the upper hall where she was to sew that Mrs. Alden discovered Babiche.
She objected.
Felicia cuddled her tiny dog.
"Why, she's a precious," she protested sweetly. "She'll just stay right beside me if you can find her a cushion—"
She felt very small and meek as she sat taking her wee neat stitches. All about her the unpleasant confusion of the house surged on. The half-grown children departed tempestuously for the pageant, their mother bustled out leaving a trail of half explicit instructions behind her. The last Felicia heard of her voice was a fretful instruction to the cook.
"—and you'll have to take something or other up to the sewing woman— some of that cold lamb will do—"
Felice wrinkled her nose commiseratingly at Babiche's questioning eyes. Babiche the elder had hated cold lamb. From the door to her left she could hear soothing murmurs of a voice reading. A carefully modulated voice that evidently cared nothing at all about what it was reading. An irascible masculine "Well, well, never mind that!" frequently interrupted the reader. At noon the voice stopped and a patient nurse appeared in the doorway.
"I'm going down for Mr. Alden's tray," she announced primly, "if he should speak will you call me?" Felicia nodded. She stitched steadily. She was putting new rows of lace on a torn petticoat, and so intent was she in joining the pattern of the lace that she forgot to watch Babiche. That inquisitive one was exploring, sniffing cautiously as she approached the invalid's bed but a second later she was trotting hastily back to her mistress.
"I positively won't have stray animals about the house," a quavering voice protested.
This petulance continued long after the nurse had returned with his tray. Felicia could hear the faint rumble of his disapproval even when the door was closed. She glanced up in dismay as the bulk of the cook blocked her light. It was not an appetizing luncheon that that individual banged down upon the lap-board that was propped across the receding arms of the morris-chair to serve as a table. There were some microscopic scraps of the cold lamb, a cup of cocoa on which the surface had long since grown thick and oily, a rather limp looking lettuce leaf with a stuffed tomato palpably left from some former meal. Felicia sipped the cocoa, she dipped bits of the dry bread in it and fed Babiche. She herself ate the lamb and struggled through the salad. She was really very, very hungry. She did not dare let herself think that the food was unpalatable. After it was all eaten she spread her napkin carefully over the empty plates and went on with her ruffle. There was a console table outside the invalid's door. Presently the nurse appeared and put his tray upon it. She set the door carefully ajar.
"I'm going out for my two hours, I think he won't want anything. I think he will just doze, he usually sleeps while I'm gone. But he didn't like his lunch, so I'll leave it here. If he should call, do you mind taking it in?"
After that the house was still. Felicia finished the petticoat, folded it neatly and began making exquisite darns in a white silk stocking. Babiche lifted her small head and sniffed in the direction of the invalid's lunch tray. Felicia eyed the tray. You would have known to have looked at that tray and its careful appointment that some one had given it to the invalid for Christmas. The china on it matched so decorously. It was an alluring looking lunch—crisp curled hearts of celery, a glowing bit of currant jelly in a glass compote, half of a delectably browned chicken surrounded by cress, and set in a silver frame was a custard cup filled with the creamiest looking custard that inspired hands had ever snatched from the oven at the psychological moment. It was quarter of one when the sedate nurse left the tray on the desk. At quarter past one Felicia fastened a glove button and sighed. Babiche's eyes were pleading. At quarter of two Felicia finished a Jacob's ladder in a long purple stocking. Babiche was sitting up and begging with her paws crossed. Felicia made her sit down by tapping her head with the thimble. At ten minutes past two Felicia had mended two pairs of short white cotton socks.
At twenty-five minutes of three a throaty voice whispered up the stairway,
"Nurse 'phoned she can't get back until after four and would I mind giving Mr. Alden his orange juice when he wakes up. It's in this glass I'm lifting to you—" A moist red hand was thrust through the open space at the bend of the stair casing. "You give it to him if he is asking before I'm back. I'm stepping across the way to my cousin's for a while—"
At twenty minutes of three Felicia had finished all of the socks save the black ones. The silk for mending them was on the edge of the console table beside the tray. She crossed the space bravely.
She had her hand on the spool of silk, when Babiche stood on her absurd head, a trick she'd not performed before Felice. Her mistress cuddled her.
"You can't have it, you precious little beggar," she whispered. "It isn't for doggies." At ten minutes of three, another pair of men's black socks had been added to the basket of completed work. Babiche gave two hungry yelps that sounded painfully loud in that silent house. Felicia struck her again with the thimble and began resolutely putting a new dress braid on a bedraggled serge skirt. At three o'clock a gentle snore emanated from the sick room. At quarter past three Felicia smothered Babiche's most frenzied bark. At seventeen minutes past three Felicia Day, seamstress, became a thief.
"One simply cannot," as Mrs. Alden remarked "trust the sort of persons one gets from the Exchange, you never can tell what they might take—"
"They" might take just a bit of chicken skin to feed to a tiny hungry dog. And "they" might lift a bit of chicken wing to hungry human lips and after that "they" might deliberately and delicately eat the rest of it and give the bone to the doggie. And "they" might crunch the bits of celery and eat the last delicious spoonful of the custard— "They" might even do that!
Especially when you remember that except for the dry bits of lamb and the sad tomato Felicia Day and Babiche, her dog, had had no other food save that from Margot's lunch box since they had left that bountiful House in the Woods.
At half past three, suddenly aware of the enormity of her crime, Felicia put her face into her hands and shook with laughter.
"Oh, Babiche! Babiche! Aren't we delight-fully wicked!"
Babiche pranced joyously, tossing her bone in the air and worrying it. With a sudden rush the wee dog dashed straight into the sick room, scurried about under the bed and back to her mistress. The snoring stopped abruptly. A waking snort was followed by heavy breathing. And then the quavering voice called,
"Miss Grant—if you'll bring that confounded tray in I'll try to eat a bite—"
Felicia's eyes surveyed the empty tray, her lips moved but she could not speak.
"Miss Grant—I said I'd—"
She stood before him, her eyes dropped demurely to hide her mirth. She had had the presence of mind to bring his orange juice, but when she looked up she felt suddenly very sorry. For he was not a beautiful old man like Grandy. He was wrinkled and yellow and gaunt and cross looking. He was not sad at being old, he was bitter.
Her heart went out to him, her mirth died as suddenly as a frightened child's.
"Are you really vairee hungry?" she asked solicitously.
Her low voice was not professionally low like the nurse's, it was just sweetly, normally low—to that irritable old man who lived in a family of shrill voices it sounded like an angel's. Her smoothly coiffed head and antiquated gown spoke eloquently to him of a past when women dressed as he thought women should dress.
He turned on his pillow and looked at her.
"Lord no! I'm not hungry! I'm never hungry—but what in the Jumping Jehosophat are you doing here?"
"I'm mending. By-the-day, you know. Your nurse went walking. And your cook went to see her cousin. So if you really were hungry—isn't it lucky you aren't?—I don't know what we would do." She advanced to the bedside. He made her want to shudder, he was so ugly in his long green dressing gown. With his bald head and piercing eyebrows he made her think of a gigantic worm. When he spoke his head waggled just as a worm's head waggles when it tops a rose bush.
"There was chicken—" he remembered petulantly, "I like that cold—"
"It was vairee good—" Felicia assured him. Just to hear Felicia say "Vairee" mouthing it as Mademoiselle D'Ormy had done, was refreshingly different. "Babiche had the skin and the bones and I had the rest. We stole it, you know—"
Her confession was deliciously funny, her eyes danced laughter though her tone was demurely proper. She was really thinking of Maman lying so lovely in her bed and she was thinking how Maman had talked about amusing people when they were worried and she was thinking that this dreadful old man was the most worried looking person she had ever seen.
His grizzled hand jammed another pillow feebly behind his shoulders. He glared at her.
"Well, well, Miss—Whadda-you-call-it," he was growing more peevish. "You'll have to find something for me—"
Her smooth hand stretched toward him as quickly as a prestidigitator's, with the glass of orange juice. He was too surprised to do anything save drink it, gulping it throatily and handing back the glass with a grunt.
"And of course," added Felicia with perfect good humor, "I shall have to pay a forfeit—I always did when I took anything from Maman's tray. If I was caught."
Her childishness of manner did not seem at all incongruous to him. She was comfortably ageless so far as he was concerned, a drab figure with a pleasant voice who treated him as though he were a human being instead of a sick ogre. In some mysterious way her attitude suggested something that no one had suggested to him for years—the thing called play!
"Forfeits for Maman," she continued, "meant I had to play chess—you don't play chess do you?"
He sat bolt upright. His beady eyes gleamed with excitement.
"Miss Whadda-you-call-it," he retorted, "you go right over there by my desk—open the bottom drawer—there's chessmen and a board. I've been looking for four years for somebody who had sense enough to play chess."
Babiche trotted at her heels, sniffing at all the new odors about her. Felicia moved easily, she got the chess men, went and brought back her lap-board and sat patiently at the bedside.
Four o'clock, half past four o'clock, five o'clock—there was no sound save the shove of the chess men. The room grew dark—the old man impatiently indicated the light. The little dog curled contently on the foot of the bed, Felicia's sleek head bent over the board. He was no easy opponent. At quarter past five nurse fluttered heavily in, looked at the bedside and gasped.
"Why Mr. Alden—"
He waved her away.
At half past five, the mistress of the household puffed up the stairway. She paused by the deserted chair in the hallway.
"Where's the seamstress?" she demanded.
The nurse showed her.
Felicia's hand was poised over a knight, she looked up gravely and smiled.
Mrs. Alden's hat with its waving plumes was overpowering enough, but her voice, strident and angry, seemed to fill the whole room.
"Well, really," she began, "I think that's the most impudent thing that I have ever had any one do in my house! What do you think I hired you for?"
For a full minute it did not occur to Felicia that the woman was addressing her. And when she knew, she rose slowly, even carefully, so as not to upset the chess-men.
"For two dollars a day—and lunch—" she answered clearly. She hadn't the remotest idea of being impertinent. She was merely literal. The only thing that saved her from Mrs. Alden's mounting wrath was the old man's voice chuckling from his pillows.
"And—" he looked triumphantly at his angry niece-in-law's snapping eyes, "she had to steal the lunch, by the Jumping Jehosophat, she had to steal her lunch! Why don't you feed people, Clara—why don't you?"
"She had a good lunch, I'm sure I instructed the cook to give her a lunch—"
With the annoying cunning of the old he contradicted her. He dearly loved a row with the mistress of the household.
"Cold lamb—" he cackled, "I heard you say cold lamb—"
"Very well, Uncle Peter," said Mrs. Alden tapping her pointed patent leather toe impatiently, "we won't argue. I'll pay the woman and she can go."
Uncle Peter's head dropped pitifully, his bravado ceased abruptly, he became a whining child.
"Don't go, Miss Whadda-you-call-it—I want to finish the game. She can pay you but don't go. It's my house, isn't it?" he fretfully interrogated the nurse, "I guess it's my house yet even if I am half dead. I'm not all dead yet, not by a long shot—"
The nurse stooped over him professionally but he waved her away.
"Sit down, can't you?" he demanded of Felicia, "it's your move."
Felicia sat down, two spots of color burning in her pale cheeks. She extended her hand over the knight again, bowing imperiously to the angry woman. Five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes—outside the echoes of the indignant woman's strident voice came across the hallway. She was venting her ill humor on the children noisily returning from their pageant, on the cook, whose frowsy head appeared at the stair landing for dinner orders, on the patient nurse who pattered about on errands.
"—what we're coming to—the trouble is I can't say my soul's my own— sewing women! Playing chess instead of sewing! The last one couldn't sew and this one won't—" She reprimanded a grocer over the telephone, she sent a child snivelling to her bedroom. But the invalid, his eyes intent on the chess board, paid no heed. He moved cautiously, craftily, he had set his heart on winning. And he was too shrewd for Felicia to dare to pretend to let him win.
The minutes seemed like ages but at length, just as the angry voice was subsiding, the old man straightened victoriously on his pillows.
"Check!" he called buoyantly, "Check!"
Felicia arose.
"You play adroitly," she encouraged him. "And I'm really ra-ther glad I stole your luncheon for here comes your supper. I know you'll be hungry for your supper—"
She was outside the door, as quiet as a shadow, fastening Louisa's old bonnet under her chin, buttoning the old coat about her; even before Mrs. Alden was at her side she had Babiche under her arm.
"Here's your money," said the woman stiffly.
Felicia shook her head.
"You might as well take it, even if you didn't work full time. Of course, I won't want you to come again."
"No?" Felicia asked with a curious upward inflection.
In the exasperated silence the invalid's voice quavered out to them.
"Miss Whadda-you-call-it!—Call that woman back here, Miss Grant!" She stepped to his door. "I wish you'd come around sometimes," he asked her pleadingly, "I do admire a good game of chess—and it's my house, I tell you, this is my house, even Clara can't say this isn't my house!"
"I'll come sometimes," she promised, "indeed I will—" she stepped back to her abashed employer. "—you aren't making him happy," she murmured passionately, "sick people and old people ought to be happy—" and walked straight down the stairs and out through the ornate gates leaving a discomfited woman behind her.
There were exactly six cents left in the bottom of Louisa's reticule, —it was when Felicia was passing a bake shop and saw a child buying currant buns that she knew what to do with them. She went in and bought buns. She walked slowly up her own stairs, pausing outside Maman's door to push the bag of buns back into the niche by the stairway. And stood a moment getting her breath and then reached out her hand.
"Let's pretend—" she murmured under the turmoil of noises—the house was perturbed at suppertime,—"Let's pretend you put them there, Maman—"
Safe in Mademoiselle's room she addressed Babiche firmly.
"That woman, that Mrs. Alden is just a WEED! A weed like the tailor's missus and the rest. Some one ought to pull her right out of Uncle Peter's house! She is worse than a weed! She ought to have to be a by- the-day! And sit in a windy hall and sew and sew. And then some one ought to bring her a tray, with messy napkins and just two pieces of dry lamb and a sad tomato—and all the while that she was eating it somebody ought to put Uncle Peter's tray on the table beside her! With chicken and custard and celery and all! Yes, that's what some one should do, Babiche!"
Babiche begged gracefully for her part of the buns. They had a delightful time together.
"But I do wish," she murmured, after they'd settled themselves on the narrow bed for the night, "I could remember whether Mademoiselle ever let the Wheezy have such a dreadful luncheon—I shall ask her tomorrow—"
She did ask her, for she did find the Wheezy, just as she found anything she set out to find, by sheer dint of persistence.
It was late afternoon when she found her. The visiting hours were almost over. The Wheezy never had visitors, she was sitting listlessly looking at nothing at all when the attendant ushered Felicia through the corridor. She was just the same old Wheezy, but more crotchety, smaller and thinner, wheezing still and she turned her dim eyes toward the doorway and called,
"If you want to speak to Mrs. Sperry why under the shining canopy don't you come in? She'll be back in a second."
For several minutes she stubbornly would not recognize Felicia. She grudgingly admitted that she did remember Mademoiselle D'Ormy and that she did recall there had been a little girl, but she was as incredulous as the Disagreeable Walnut had been that this frumpy, drab looking person was that sprightly child. Felicia strove mightily to reassure her.
"Can't you remember when you used to sew for us at Montrose Place, how I called you the Wheezy and it made you cross?"
Miss Pease admitted that the child had called her that.
"And can't you remember anything else I did? I mean that the little girl did? For if you could I would do it and then you'd know—"
"She used to whistle—" the admission came slowly after deep thought, "She used to whistle real good, when the old man wasn't about."
Felicia sat down on the edge of the Wheezy's bed. Her eyes were shining. Mrs. Sperry had come back and was sitting by the Wheezy's window. It seemed that they shared the room. She was staring animatedly at her room-mate's visitor. From the opened door into the corridor Felicia could glimpse other old ladies, peeping in curiously, hovering about like gray moths at twilight.
She smiled at them wistfully, as she was wont to smile at Grandy, with her heart in her eyes.
"We're going to pretend something," she called to them softly, "Would you like to pretend? We're going to pretend I'm a little girl in a back yard who has been hearing Marthy sing—Marthy sings a song called Billy Boy about a boy who had been courting. She used to say, in the song, 'Where have you been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy—Where have you been, charming Billy?' I can't sing but you shall hear me whistle it—"
The little gray moths of women crept closer, some of them fluttered into the Wheezy's room. The twilight grew deeper and deeper, and on the edge of the Wheezy's bed sat little Miss By-the-day and whistled the songs that Marthy used to sing. "Churry Ripe—Churry Ripe—" and "Ever of thee I am fondly dreaming—"
She whistled until some one came down the corridor to light the lights. The Wheezy's bony hand was on hers, the Wheezy's tears were falling.
"Why under the shining canopy I didn't know who you was—" she muttered apologetically, "My soul, I guess it's because I can't half see!"
"No, it's because—" Felicia sighed, "I'm not really that little girl any more. Only the Happy Part of her is here—" she put her hand on her breast. "I'm really old—like Grandy—like Piqueur. I can see vairee well. I saw myself—" she paused, "in a mirror, you know, I was that surprised—" she managed to laugh a little. "But Wheezy dear, there's a man who has to know that I am Felicia Day. Will you tell him that you know I am?"
The Wheezy promised eagerly. And then Felicia whistled a while longer, because one little gray moth, more daring than the rest wanted to hear,
"I remember, I remember in the years long passed away, A little maid and I would meet beside the stream to play-"
Her quavering voice recited the verses, while Felicia whistled, oh, so softly!
They fluttered after her as she walked down the corridor, the Matron walked beside her and the Wheezy's arm was through hers. Of course she was coming again, she promised them she would, they accepted her promises with eager queries like children.
"I'll come another visiting day—" she patted the Wheezy's shoulders, "I like to! You all are so good at pretending!"
"Do you know," she told Judge Harlow in the morning, "I did find some one who knows who I am?" Her face was glowing with achievement,
"Even if you get so old that you don't look at all as you used to there's some part of you that people can't forget. Some Happy Part of you! You really ought to try it! Perhaps there is some old lady up there who used to know you when you were little! If you'd go there some visiting day and whistle for her she'd know you, just as quick! You try it!"
She went away thrilling with anticipation. He had a young lawyer there, who had a great many papers. The young lawyer explained to her that the Justice had asked him to keep track of things for her. And they were arranging it so that in another week, she would possess her house, mortgages, taxes, fines and all, and the thirty days "to straighten things" but she would actually possess it and the tailor and the tailor's missus and all their dreadful tenants would have to go out, bag and baggage.
She trotted into The Woman's Exchange at noon, positively buoyant.
"You'll have to find me another by-the-day," she announced to Miss Sarah.
"How'd you make out Saturday?"
"I—made—out—" Felicia laughed back at her. "She was a WEED, that woman. The old man played chess with me but she didn't like us to do it. I couldn't take the two dollars—"
"I'm afraid you aren't businesslike," Miss Sarah chided, "you said you needed the money."
"I do," Felicia assured her, "that's why I'm back for another by-the- day."
Miss Sarah found another job for her, indeed she jotted down several possible places in a small notebook whose florid cover extolled the virtues of Dinkle's Cough Syrup.
"This would be a good book for anybody so unbusinesslike as you," she confided as she presented her client with it. "In the back here are pages to write what you earn and what you spend and to keep track of the days you are going out."
It fitted nicely into the reticule. Felicia felt competent with it there. She used to take it out at night and write in it. It had double entry pages labelled grandly "INCOME" "EXPENDITURES." With the first pages Felicia wrote a letter to Margot, a masterly letter in which she bade her servant tell Zeb that the filthy dirty heathen were going to be sent away, a letter in which she warned Margot that unless Grandy were too unhappy she would not go back to the House in the Woods until the house in the city was clean once more. She explained that certain legal matters had to be attended to. The round stroke of her pen seemed to proclaim her complete confidence that they could be attended to satisfactorily. But the postscript begged Margot to tell Bele to stay all he could with Grandy, "If Grandy looks at the chess board tell Bele to put the men on it and shove a man every time Grandy pushes one—you must all keep Grandy happy." And the last postscript of all said, "The narcissi are lovely, I have them in my room!"
Which was quite truthful. She did have narcissi in her room! Their fragrance almost overpowered her. She lay in the darkness and pretended that they were in the garden and that she was lying on them. She had been most businesslike about them. If you could have audited her accounts in Dinkle's Cough Syrup you would have seen on the page where she first began her reckoning,
"INCOME EXPENDITURES Two dollars Bone—five cents Apples, cakes and sandwiches forty five cents Narcissi One dollar."
It is delightful to relate that no one ever in all this world purchased more narcissi for one dollar than Felicia bought at the florist's stand that wonderful evening when she made her first expenditure from money she had actually earned. She looked so tired and wan in her frumpy old clothes that the florist's clerk, who was a sentimental young thing, assumed she must be purchasing them for some one's grave. Even though he might be foredoomed to lose his job, he recklessly tied up the whole bundle that her hand had indicated.
"Honest, she made me feel like I oughta be giving things away instead of selling 'em," he apologized to his astounded boss, who had met the new customer on her way out, "Honest, she got me hipped!"
In spite of the "heathen," in spite of taxes and fines—in spite of the fatigue that still remained from those days of travel and hunger, in spite of the strangeness of sitting all day stitching, in spite of even the fierce longing, whenever she passed a telephone, to speak with Dudley Hamilt, Felicia found herself—happy, happy with the same haunting happiness with which she had long ago untangled the puzzle of the lost garden, happy with the aching happiness that longs to attain and trembles lest it cannot.
"Babiche," she chattered, "When I was young, like the girls in Piqueur's song I found my fun in spring forests; but now—" she was looking out across the river at the gleaming towers of Manhattan, glimpsing the jewel-like line of trolleys crawling slowly over the lighted bridges, watching the busy shipping that scurried over the harbor in the violet and bronze evening, "Now I find it in spring cities—"
She consulted the garden book much, peering bravely down into the appalling rubbish heaps of her beloved back yard.
"All of the ivy isn't gone and there's wistaria and we can make new ivies from slips, next spring it must be just as it used to be. Perhaps we can find the old benches, I know exactly where to build the paths. We will have to get some pebbles to make the paths. We must plant plenty of narcissi again, Babiche. Because some day, there might be some other girl who lived in this house and who walked in the garden and when Her Night came we would want it to be just as lovely as it was That Night—"
She had no definite girl in mind, she had not really, although she thought she had found the "pattern" of what the house was to be, she only longed to get the "filthy dirty heathen" out and make things orderly as they once had been. I doubt if she had yet visualized anybody as living in that house, save Maman and Grandy and herself. Yet even before the heathen were out she had brought home a girl—the Sculptor Girl, the first of those starry-eyed young humans who were to call the house their own.
It happened this way. She set forth on a cloudy, threatening over-warm morning, Babiche under her arm, toward a new address, a morning so palpably "growing" that she longed to be planting. She had promised herself eagerly that the very day when the heathen were gone she would plant some ivies. She was pretending vehemently that the heathen were gone and that she didn't have to be a "by-the-day" yet before night she was exclaiming passionately, "I am proud, proud, proud I was a by- the-day—"
The new place was not a hard one. A fat, seemingly good natured employer awaited her, a boarding house mistress who had curtains to be mended and napkins to be hemmed, who was dubious about taking the applicant when she discovered she could not use a sewing machine but who decided on second reflection (aided by the fact that she had just discovered that her sewing machine was not in repair) to allow Felicia her day's work.
The vestibule doors were embellished with gilt lettering that proclaimed the place to be
"Seeley's"
Mrs. Seeley did not object to Babiche. Indeed she kissed the top of her nose so resoundingly that Babiche was terrified and Felicia stared with amazement. It had never occurred to her that any one ever kissed a dog. If Felicia had been left comfortably to her own devices at her previous "places" she quickly discovered that the Seeley household made rather an event of the seamstress' coming. There was no necessity for stealing a lunch. Indeed, when lunchtime arrived she was ushered into the basement dining-room and invited to eat with the rest of the family and as many of the "select boarders" as appeared. It was not a good luncheon. But to Felicia it was an extraordinarily gay function. For at the table was Mr. Perry, immaculately groomed in a discreet uniform. Mrs. Seeley introduced them with a matter-of-fact statement of their occupations.
"Miss Day, meet Mrs. J. Furthrington's chauffeur—Miss Day is sewing for me—" she poured their teas impartially. It appeared that Mrs. J. Furthrington's chauffeur did not often grace the boarding house for his meals. He usually, as he expressed it "ate wherever the run was." He talked with whimsical despondency of his job which, it appeared, was new.
"Good gracious," chaffed Mrs. Seeley, "I thought you'd felt grand from associating with swells and changing your rooms—"
"Well I feel swell," he admitted dubiously, "but in a way the job gets my goat. Munition millionaires, that's what I'm working for, can you beat it? Last year in a Canarsie bungalow and this year a-riding in a Rolls Royce! Everybody to his taste—mine wouldn't be for nobody else driving my car no matter how much spondulex come my way. It will be me for the little old low down 'steen cylinder racer when I get my pile—" he slid his long body under the table and grasped his plate as a steering wheel, "'Poor, get out of muh way!' my horn will yell—"
His fellow boarders laughed uproariously, his landlady wiped tears from her eyes.
"Hain't he comical?" she appealed to her sewing woman.
Felicia viewed the redoubtable Mr. Perry with amused eyes.
"He's vairee good at pretending—" her shy approbation came. He winked at her.
"Any time you want a joy-ride, call on me!"
Which fresh sally seemed to explode uncontrollable mirth about the basement dining-room. Flapping his wonderful gauntlets together he called a farewell from the doorway.
"Only get a different bunnet—" he waved Louisa's from the peg on the hall rack, Felicia didn't mind in the least, she was mouthing this new phrase "Joy-ride," it sounded delightful. All the same she rescued her bonnet and carried it upstairs with her. "I love that boy like a plate of fudge," confided Mrs. Seeley as she and Felicia were ascending to the ornate bedroom where the sewing was waiting. "He's the life of the place. Everybody likes him. I don't know what there is about him, he hain't so handsome but he certainly is poplar. Yet Dulcie won't stand for him—Dulcie thinks he's fresh."
It appeared that Dulcie was not pleased with anything or anybody. Especially when she was having one of her "spells." Mrs. Seeley rocked violently as she recounted to her new seamstress her trials with Dulcie.
"She's a caution. In a way I do owe her a livin'. She's my husband's niece I know, that is by his first wife y'understand. She wasn't even exactly his niece. But on account of his havin' to use Dulcie's money in his plumbin' business we agreed to give her her livin'. Al kept her in a nart school, a swell art school when we was first married. That was a mistake. I said to him many a time to mark-my-words, it would be a mistake. Of course when he died I didn't feel it was up to me to keep her in a nart school. So I took her right into the family, same's I'd take you or anybody. But it's no use. All she does is mope. Even Mr. Perry can't cheer her up, though he tries.
"Says he to her only last night, 'Cheer up, I'll take you a nice ride down to the morgue.' I thought everybody'd die laughing to hear him but she just got up and stalked out of the dining-room like somebody had insulted her. And I can't get a peep out of her today. Just this noon I says to her, pleasant enough, because I was short of help, wouldn't she come down and wait on table, but would she?" demanded Mrs. Seeley bitterly, "She would not. She said she was no scullery maid and slammed the door in my face and went back to her wet mud—"
"Oh, is she building a garden?" asked Felice eagerly.
"Nothing so useful as a garden," snorted Mrs. Seeley, "it's clay she's fussin' with, thinkin' she's going to be able to make statues some day. Statues! What kind of a job is that nowadays! Artist jobs is impractical. Dulcie is awful impractical. I offered to send her to business college, she could make a good living, but no, she's gotta make statues! With the parks all full of 'em now and that kind of thing going out of style for parlors! I put both my Rogers groups upstairs in the attic when I bought the phonograph—there's no style to a statue any more. And she wants to learn to make 'em!"
"But I should think," breathed the seamstress her eyes glowing as she lifted them from her work, "that you'd be proud to have her want to try to make something."
What Mrs. Seeley thought expressed itself in the bang of the door as she left to answer a strident summons below stairs. But after she had gone Felice became aware of continued sobbing in the next room, a sobbing as penetrating, for all it was not so loud, as that of the noisy Italian baby at home.
For a long time the weeping was sustained and dreary. It never ceased save when Mrs. Seeley came back to give Felicia instructions about her work, but usually after her footfalls had clattered down the stairway the crying would begin again, very softly. Frequently Felicia could hear the pad, pad, pad of stockinged feet. She knew that whenever the crying stopped the grieving one walked to and fro restlessly. After a longer interval of silence than usual Felicia became aware that Babiche was sniffing excitably. The nervous sniff that had always characterized the wee doggies on days when the carbolic water was ready for the rinsing.
Felicia wrinkled her own nose tentatively. Presently she got up and opened the door to the next room. It was empty. But adjoining it was an untidy bathroom with a dark wainscoting and a grimy enameled tub and standing over near the uncurtained window was a boyish figure, wrapped in a man's overcoat, with a bottle in her hand. She had wept so long, poor girl, that Felicia couldn't tell very much about how she really looked, except that it seemed to her she had never seen any one so unhappy.
Felicia stood there, an absurdly dowdy figure, Babiche clasped in her arm, and smiled timorously.
"Where is your dog?" she asked sweetly.
"What dog?" demanded a sulky voice.
"The dog you were going to wash—" Felicia's voice was casual. "With the 'scarbolic.'"
"I wasn't—trying to wash any dog—" the girl breathed dully.
Felicia moved quickly, she took the bottle from the girl's hand. "Then I wish you'd lend me your—'scarbolic,'" she entreated sweetly, "Babiche really needs a bath."
The youthful sufferer stared from her tear-stained eyes, stared with all her might at the shabby, frumpy, middle-aged looking little person who had taken the bottle from her hand.
"I can't stand it—" she sobbed bitterly, "I've got to quit—you don't know how I feel—I feel as if—"
"When you feel that way," interrupted Felicia quietly, "you mustn't have a 'scarbolic' bottle, that's a thing that will make you go dead—"
"It's my own business if I do—I'd rather be dead than the way I am—" she stretched out her arms passionately, "I haven't room to breathe! I did have that top floor front you know, it was a peach of a place to work. But she rented it to a chauffeur and put me in this hole—oh, oh, when all I asked was room for my model stand and room for my clay —when all I wanted was room for Pandora—you can't know how I feel—"
"But I do know how you feel!" slender hands cupped the girl's face. Felicia's eyes looked through into the girl's soul. "You feel like 'I can't get out, I can't get out, sang the starling'! Once I did. Perhaps every one of us comes to a time when she feels all shut in—I went out into my garden when I felt that way. It is a big garden but it felt smaller than this room. I cried in it all night long, walking up and down and up and down—quite sure I didn't want to live any more. But when it was getting to be morning I saw a rosebush by the wall. In a jar. I'd forgotten to take care of it and Bele—he is good, you know, but stupid—had been tending it. Poor Rosebush!
"It was much too big for its jar. Its roots were all cramped and its top all cut back so it couldn't bloom—you mustn't prune some roses too much, you know—I've just been thinking, that you're rather like my rosebush. You're Dulcie, aren't you? I think I know exactly what you need. If you'd just come along with me—I've a big room—I mean I will have as soon as I get the abundance-of-weeds-for-which-we-have- no-name out—I'd just love you to come with me. You'd be proud, proud, proud if you did—
"Listen, that's Mrs. Seeley coming back up the stairs. She's bringing me my two dollars. You put on your shoes and when she's down the stairs I'll whistle—so—vairee softly. And then you will come out and down we'll go. It will really be a great favor if you will—it's a big house, my house and I'm ra-ther lonely—"
It wasn't until they were outside in the shadowy, rain-sweet street that Dulcie realized she had been coaxed that far. She drew back. "I've no hat," she whimpered, "It's no use—I don't want to go—"
"You would," the seamstress insisted, "if you only knew what fun it's going to be. And we'll stop in the Exchange and buy you a cap. It's a darling cap. I've wanted it evaire since I saw it, it's velvet, rather like a choir boy's, only it has a tassel." Her arm was through Dulcie's, they were really walking along. "And we shall buy our supper there too. Miss Susan has fat jars of baked beans and little round corn muffins and I think she has quince jelly—"
She actually managed to get her hysterical guest as far as the shop without further parley. The girl took the cap and the parcels that Felicia handed her, turning her head away when she fancied Miss Susan was eyeing her sharply. They walked around the corner and into the gateway of that unspeakably dirty house. The girl drew back in dismay.
"Oh, it's altogether too dreadful—" she exclaimed. "It's worse than Aunt Seeley's—I can't go in—"
But she did go in and up the stairs too, protesting weakly all the way. She was plainly exhausted from her emotions, and clung to Felicia's arm. And when they were safe in Mademoiselle's room she looked about her wildly. "It's an awful place—" she moaned.
"It's going to be lovely," promised Felicia stoutly, "It used to be lovely. Look here," she drew the girl to the window and pointed out across the gleaming river, "that's what you'll see every night from your windows. You won't be in this little room, you'll be in the big room next, the room that used to be my nursery."
She wheedled the tired girl into eating a bit. She coaxed her to lie on the bed and watch the stars. She did not talk any more, just listened to sobbing breaths that the girl drew—listened as she sat in the wicker chair with Babiche cuddled in her arms. And presently the girl slept. And Felicia sighed and slept too.
Morning was droll and difficult. An enormous bumping and thumping awakened the sleepers. Cramped and dazed from her uncomfortable night in the chair Felicia jumped up startled; drowsy and bewildered in her unaccustomed bed, Dulcie sat up and stared at her.
"Whatever is it?" Dulcie stammered.
Felicia clapped her hands.
"It's the weeds—this is going to be a wonderful, wonderful day, Dulcie, you're going to be so glad—just think! The tailor and the tailor's missus and all of them are going—"
They were not only going, they had already started. All day long the old house groaned under their leave-taking. All day long Felicia chattered to Dulcie of her plans of how they should find where the old furniture had gone and bring it back; of how they should make the whole house lovely.
Dulcie was shy and silent most of the time, her eyes were still red, she was still numb from her nerve-racking day before, still shamed by the fact that this queer little creature had given her her bed and slept in a chair beside her. Late afternoon found the two of them standing in the empty room that had been the nursery. They had been laughing a little over the absurdity of their situation; the tailor's missus had removed the bed and chair from Mademoiselle's room, and they were furnitureless. But Dulcie was waking up mentally after her day of stupor. "Impractical" as her aunt had proclaimed her, she proved the contrary very quickly.
"Steamer chairs," she decided instantly, "I left two steamer chairs and some rugs over on Ella Slocum's back porch—I'll bet we could get a grocery boy to bring them over for us—"
"Only what good will it do?" she tramped about the great room restlessly, "It's no use, Miss Day, you might better have let me quit —you've got troubles enough without bothering with me—"
"Isn't there room enough?" asked Felicia shyly. "Isn't it big enough?"
"It's big enough for the model stand—" she admitted moodily. "It's a good light. I could paint these silly papered walls—" Felicia sighed. Dear old shepherds and shepherdesses! It was not the gathering twilight alone that let them mist away as she looked.
"Are they so silly?" she asked. "I didn't know." But the girl did not answer her.
"It's no use," that moody creature was muttering despondently. "There's space enough but it's no use. I don't seem to want to do it any more—I used to sit and dream about how I'd do it and how it would make other people dream just to look—it wasn't going to be any ordinary Pandora—it was to be a symbol—a symbol of what goes on in your heart when you're young—before you know about life—oh, I can't chitter-chatter about it—but I used to think I could make it—"
"Of course you can make it," Felicia insisted. "Not just now—" she led the girl to the window, "right now, the first thing you'll have to do is to help me in the garden. Doesn't it look ugly down there? It used to be lovely. Probably as soon as it's lovely again you will walk around in it and dream about your Pandora. I used to dream a lot of things in that garden. Some day, while I'm off sewing on my stupid sewing, you'll come dashing upstairs—and begin! Think what fun it will be when I get home that night! I'll call out, 'Where's my sculptor girl?' And you'll call out—'Here, I've begun!'" Felicia waved her hand into the gloom behind them as though Pandora were already mysteriously there. Perhaps she was!
At any rate that was the moment that Felicia won!
The Sculptor Girl laughed, a nervous little laugh, and dashed off to arrange for the steamer chairs. Presently she came back with them and found Felicia had kindled a fire in the Peggoty grate. It was delightfully cosy with two candles burning recklessly on the mantel- shelf and Felicia and Dulcie sitting by the embers of the little fire. They'd had a supper of sandwiches and milk. Babiche was curled at their feet and they were planning excitably what they'd do with the house, when from the depths of the empty hall the old bell shrilled. They'd bolted the doors an hour before when the last of the tailor's tribe had departed. It was the Sculptor Girl who mustered courage to go down.
"It's all right," she called up to Felicia, "it's Miss Sarah from the Exchange. There's a Mr. Alden with her—will you come down?"
He was a very apologetic Mr. Alden.
"I know it's after eight," he said, "but I've had a time finding you. It's Uncle Peter. He's—well, Miss Grant and the doctor think he's pretty bad tonight. He's a notion he wants to play chess with you, he's been asking all day. I couldn't find you till now. Would you come along for an hour or two to pacify him?"
The Sculptor Girl decided for her.
"Babiche and I will wait up for you," she said. "We'll wait—"
It was as comfortable a motor as the Judge's. Little Miss Day let herself rest in its cushions. She felt rather lonely without Babiche, but she was glad she had had her to leave with the Sculptor Girl.
"Maybe the dear old duffer will be asleep when we get there and I can send you right back," Mr. Alden suggested hopefully. "He was so darned good to me when I was a kid that I can't let him miss anything I can get for him—Lord knows that's not much—I thought I could get you right away but I didn't have any name and I couldn't find out where you came from—my wife didn't have your address—"
They entered quietly and were up the stairway quickly. Outside the door he paused, "Just as soon as he is asleep," he whispered, "you come out and let me know—I'll be in the library downstairs with some chaps and I'll phone for the car to come around for you—you're awfully good to come—" he was a bit awkward.
"Uncle Peter" looked no more miserable than, he had the week before when she had met him, save that his eyes burned deeper. His voice was more petulant, he wasted no time in preliminaries, merely ejaculated a grateful,
"Ah! Why didn't you come earlier?"
The nurse sat by her light, reading; the chess board lay on the small table; Uncle Peter was propped in his cushions and the game began.
From below stairs Felicia could hear faint echoes of conversations. She had heard the mistress of the house departing in the same motor that had brought them, but a steady rumble of men's voices and a faint aroma of cigars floated up the stairway. You can't think what exultation it gave her, just having a sense of nearness to sturdy masculinity after a lifetime of invalids and old folks! She liked the spirit of argument that dimly arose, the eager confab—"It's not feasible"—"It couldn't be pulled off"—"Quixotic plan"—"take a mint of money—"
The sheltered sick room was like all her life, but below stairs there were—men! She moved her pawns quietly, watching Uncle Peter's adroit game. She watched too, something else, the light in Uncle Peter's eyes. They sparkled.
The room was impossibly hot yet the old man shivered, just as Grandy shivered, and drew his dressing gown closer. Felicia was very tired from her exciting day. She grew paler and paler; the circles under her eyes grew deeper; her forehead was moist; her hand trembled a bit. But presently she heard.
"Check!" She roused herself, she had been playing badly, he had caught her! But he laughed, a feeble, senile laugh, and leaned back, altogether pleased with himself.
"A drink," he panted and closed his eyes. "Come again, Miss Whadda- you-call-it-"
The nurse's eyes reproached her as she tiptoed out.
A pert maid arose, from the hall chair,
"Mr. Alden said for me to 'phone the garage, that the car would be here for you directly—will you sit down—"
There was a bench on the stair landing below them beside an open window. Felicia gestured toward it, and the maid nodded.
She could hear the voices more clearly now, she could even see two of the speakers through an arched doorway. They were sprawled easily in big chairs, a blue haze of smoke floating over them. One of them was laughing,
"That's all right—we agree with you—we'll go in your wild scheme if you can find some other fools too—only, I say Dud, before you beat it just sing a couple things, will you? You might be gone six months instead of three and that's too long between songs. I know you aren't singing and you haven't any voice and all that, but just a couple to show there's no hard feeling—those things you used to—the one that the darkey boy wrote—that Dunbar chap—'The Sum'—and that other one—"
Others added to the appeal. Some one objected. Felicia caught a brief glimpse of a tall figure, over-coat on arm, the doorway, and a hand pulling him back. But on he came, protesting vibrantly that he never sang any more. He looked up toward the figure on the stairs,
"I believe I'll run up to say Howdy and Good-by to your Uncle Peter—"
One step, two steps he had ascended before she could actually see him. Then with her heart in her eyes she looked to him—he was so tall, so broad shouldered, so superb in his ruddy blondeness!
"Oh, Dudly Hamilt!" her lips moved. But she leaned back against the shadow of the curtains as he drew nearer.
He was so close she could touch him, he was so close that at last he saw her—that is he saw a little drab person whose figure was lost in a caped coat.
"Beg pardon," he murmured—and passed her—
She buried her face in her hands. She was too weak to move. She was still sitting with her face thus hidden when he came down the stairway a moment later, calling back to the invalid,
"You'll be as good as ever when it's summer—"
The others were waiting for him at the foot of the stairway.
"Un-cle Pe-ter-" called Freddie Alden, "ask Dud to sing 'Who Knows' for you." Uncle Peter did.
And so with her pulse racing madly, with her throat so dry it seemed as though she could not breathe, Felicia Day sat and listened, listened with her trembling hand over her mouth to keep her lips from crying out. Listened to the first firm chords as Dudley Hamilt's long fingers moved over the keys, listened as he began to sing. He wasn't using very much voice, just enough to let the melody ring upward to Uncle Peter, round and smooth and inexpressibly caressing. He wasn't singing as though it mattered especially what he sang, indeed at first the phrasing was careless. But presently his voice soared more freely, it grew vibrant with longing.
"Thou art the soul of a summer's day, Thou art the breath of a rose; But the summer is fled and the rose is dead; Where are they gone, who knows, who knows?
"Thou art the blood of my heart of hearts, Thou art my soul's repose; But my heart's grown numb and my soul is dumb—"
The song stopped abruptly.
"Sorry. Can't sing it.—'Night, Uncle Peter. 'Night everybody—" A door banged.
"Gad, he's a queer chap! If I had his voice I'd sing—" she caught the fatuous phrases of the man who had laughed but after that she was no longer sure of herself. She could only hear the muffled rise of her own sobbing.
The chauffeur asked a respectful question at the doorway.
"Why, yes," answered Freddie Alden, "the maid 'phoned—wait a minute— Hullo—" he called. But a second later he was racing upward,
"I say, Miss Grant—this little woman here—she's fainted—"
