Little Miss By-The-Day | Page 3

end. There was an ink bottle on a

gray blotter, a pewter tray for pens and a queer shaped lump of bronze,
a paper weight I supposed. I wouldn't have been human if I could have
kept my fingers off that bit of metal. I pretended to pick it up
accidentally but I did it as guiltily as a child touches something
forbidden. She didn't say a word, just watched me mischievously while
she arranged the tea cups on the other end of the table. Presently she
lighted a tiny temple lamp, melted a dab of sealing wax in its wavering
blue flames--rose-colored wax it was--and it splashed out on the gray
blotter like molten fire.
She took the bit of bronze from my fingers and pressed it firmly on the
wax.
"It's a mouth--" I murmured. "It's lips--"
"It's her kiss," she answered me. "That's the most beautiful and the
most difficult thing I ever made. It's Felicia Day's letter seal."
"Then she really is a real person--" I stammered fatuously.
"Real?" The girl's low voice lifted itself belligerently. "What do you
think she is? Imitation? Why, she's the one REAL thing in this whole
sham world! I guess you've never met anybody who knew her or you
wouldn't keep gulping out idiotic things like that! I guess if you ever
talked with her even a minute you'd understand how real she is. She has
the crispest--the sincerest way of speaking. Though of course it's not a
bit like other people's ways. She probably doesn't talk like anybody
you've ever listened to. Not like anybody I've ever heard of anyway."
The girl's eyes were glowing. "Are you musical?" she demanded.
"Because I need a musical word to tell you how she talks. She talks
rubato. Her short words drawl ever so long and her long ones hurry so's
to let her make up for the stolen time. And she has a sort of trace of
accent like--well, it's not like anything except herself really. You see,
her mother wasn't French but she was brought up with French people
and Felice says 'evaire' and 'nevaire' and uses funny little Frenchy
phrases she heard her mother use though she doesn't really talk French
at all. And she has a bossy way of speaking, kind of --well, humbly
bossing, if you can get me. Talks like a Lady Pied Piper and sweeps
you along with her just about six minutes after she's begun coaxing you
to do whatever she's decided is the best thing for you to do. Believe me,
I know she does it! Because I was one of the first ones she swept
along!" The girl's words were tumbling so fast now that I could hardly

follow.
"Did you ever find yourself in heaps of trouble? Too much trouble to
stand? Did you? I was that way the day she opened my door. It made
me perfectly furious to have her open my door. And she looked so little
and so old and so frumpy--she'd been sewing all day for my beastly
step-aunt and I'd been trying all day to get the courage to--to--" the
girl's tears were streaming now and she didn't bother to wipe them
away, she seemed utterly unashamed of them, "to get rid of myself.
And just the minute I got the cork out of the bottle that little old angel
opened the door. She was so darned different from anybody I'd ever
seen in all my life and she talked so differently from anybody I'd ever
listened to, I--well, I sort of forgot wanting to die because I was curious
to find out where on earth she'd come from--or where on earth she was
going to! She had a funny little dog under her arm; she gave it to me to
hold. And the next thing I knew she was inviting me to go home with
her. She thought I might like this room, she said. She told me it was
filled 'with-an-abundance-of-weeds-we-have-not-any- names-for--'
Wasn't that an absolute corker? That was her way of describing the
Italian family with too many brats that were living here. She'd got that
apology for 'em out of her great-great-grandma's garden book! Can you
beat it? She talks about everybody as if they belonged in a garden. She
called me--" the girl's lips quivered,--"a rosebush that had been pruned
too much--roots cramped--she said-- anyway she picked me up to
transplant me! Marched me into the 'orrible, messy, noisy, smelly hutch
that this house used to be, up all those eighty 'leven stairs, and she kept
her chin in the air as though it was a royal palace she was taking me
into! She just kept saying,
"'Come! You'll love, love, love it! And you're going to be proud, proud,
proud to