Little Miss By-The-Day | Page 7

She never clambered past the other niches that she didn't whimsically wish there was a Maman on every floor to leave something outside for her. So after a time the canny child began leaving things for herself, tucked slyly back where the housemaids wouldn't find them. She used to hide her silver mug with water at the very top stair because she was so thirsty from the climb.
She was always happy in Maman's room and in the garden but she had many unhappy times in that nursery. It was at the very top of the back of the house. From the barred windows under the carved brownstone copings she could peer out at the ships in the harbor and the shining green of Battery Park. The nursery had a fireplace just opposite the door that connected with the tiny room in which the old French woman slept. Both these rooms had been decorated with a landscape paper peopled with Watteau shepherds and shepherdesses and oft-repeated methodical groups of lambs. On the cold mornings she was bathed beside the fire--which she very much hated--and once when she was especially angry at the sharp dash of the bath sponge against her thin shoulders she clutched at the flabby dripping thing with all her might and sent it hurtling through the doorway where it splashed against the side wall of the tiny room and smudged out the flock of a simpering shepherdess. And instead of being sorry that she had obliterated the paper lambs she remembers shaking her fist at the discolored spot and shrieking "Nevaire come back, nevaire!"
Mademoiselle D'Ormy made her tell Maman. Mademoiselle's disapproval made it seem an admirable crime until Maman said ever se gently,
"I'm sorry you were unhappy!"
"_I was happy_," persisted Felicia, "I was proud, proud, proud when I threw it!"
"But you made Mademoiselle unhappy and you've made me unhappy--and you can't be truly happy, Felicia, when you're making some one else unhappy--"
Felicia discovered that she couldn't. Not with Maman's gentle eyes looking into hers, so she threw herself on her knees and kissed her mother's hand. Just as she had seen her grandfather kiss it.
"Let's pretend!" she whispered, "Let's pretend I didn't do it! Now let's pretend I'm Grandy!"
Pretending she was her Grandfather Trenton was one of their most delicious games. She would tap on the door, delicately, and ask in mincing imitation of the French woman,
"Madame, will you see ze Major?" Then, with great dignity she would advance to the bedside.
"Ah! Octavia!" she would say, eloquently, "How charming you look to- day!"
For that was what Grandy always said when he came into the room to see Maman.
You'd have liked Major Trenton. You'd have liked him a lot. But you could have liked him more if he'd been a little kinder to Felice. For by one of those strange, unexplained twists of human nature this fine gentleman, who was so tolerant with his uncouth servants and so admirably gentle with his wee dogs, was unconsciously cruel to the small grand-daughter who so adored him. She adored his immaculate neatness, the ruddy pinkness of his skin; she loved his wavy white hair and the deep sparkle of his dark eyes. She saw nothing droll about the peaked felt hat and long black coat that he persisted in wearing, or about the ruffled shirt, with its absurd flaring collar and black satin stock. She even loved the empty coat sleeve pinned inside his breast pocket. She thought him the most beautiful human in the whole world. She lived in constant dread of what Grandy would or would not be pleased to have her do. And though she was unaware of it, her everyday behavior was exactly what that silent man had so ordered. She did not know there was a God because the Major was an atheist--who out-Ingersolled Robert G. in the violence of his denial of deity. She did not know there was a world of reality outside the garden because he did not choose to have her mingle with that world. She was not taught French because he vowed he hated France and the French and all their ways. She was taught to curtsy and to dance because it pleased him to have a woman walk well and he believed dancing kept the figure supple. She was taught needlework because he thought it seemly for a woman to sew and he liked the line of the head and neck bent over an embroidery frame. She was taught to knit because he remembered that his mother had told him that delicate finger tips were daintily polished by an hour's knitting a day. He was--though he wouldn't have admitted it--proud of her slender hands--they looked exactly as his wife's had looked. It was the only trait she had inherited from