Little Miss By-The-Day | Page 9

people happy.
"It's not easy," Octavia assured her, "but it's rather amusing. It's a game
too. You see some one who is tired or cross or worried and you think
'This isn't pleasant for him or for me!' Then you think of something that
may distract the tiredness or the worry--maybe you play softly on the
lute--maybe you suggest chess--maybe you tell something very droll
that happened in the garden or the kennel--he doesn't suspect why
you're telling him, at first he scarcely seems to hear you and
then--when he does stop thinking about the unpleasantness--he
smiles!--Watch Grandfather when he says 'Check!' and you will see
what I mean--"
One comfort was, Felice didn't have to play chess all of the days. Never
on the days when Certain Legal Matters came. Then Grandfather
disappeared into the gloomy depths of the library and from the garden
Felice could hear the disagreeable grumble of the burly lawyer as he
consulted with his extraordinary old client.
"Absolutely no! Absolutely no!" her grandfather's voice would ring out,
"I tell you I will not! A man who takes a pension for doing his duty to
his country is despicable! And as for the other matter--I do not have to
touch anything that was my wife's! I do not approve of the manner

whereby she obtained that income--if Octavia wishes it, that is a
different matter--it can be kept for the child if Octavia chooses to look
at the matter that way--but for myself I will not touch it! I do not
require it--I will not touch it--it was a bad business--There is nothing
quixotic about my refusal, nothing whatever, sir! We differ absolutely
on that point, as we do on most others!"
Felicia heard that speech so often that she could almost have recited it,
she heard it nearly every time that Certain Legal Matters appeared, he
always put the Major in a temper. Grandy couldn't get himself
sufficiently calm for chess on such days.
Nor did she play chess on the days when the Wheezy came to sew.
The advent of the Wheezy was an enormous affair in Felice's life. It
was one of the first times that the child was taken outside of the house
or the garden--that blustery March day when she and Mademoiselle
walked around the corner to a small house in whose basement window
rested a sign, WOMAN'S EXCHANGE AND EMPLOYMENT
AGENCY. A tiny bell jingled as they entered and from behind the
curtains at the rear emerged a little woman whose face looked like the
walnuts that were served with grandpapa's wine, very disagreeable
indeed. Felice always spoke of her as The Disagreeable Walnut. It was
in this shop that she saw her first doll, a ridiculous fat affair constructed
of a hank of cotton with shoe buttons for eyes and a red silk
embroidered mouth and an enormous braid of string for hair. And it
was while she was rapturously contemplating it that she heard the
wizened proprietor say, "Do you wish to have the work done by the job
or by the day?" Then the Disagreeable Walnut pompously consulted a
huge dusty ledger from which she decided that a certain Miss Pease
would suit their requirements.
"Two dollars a day and lunch," she informed them curtly and that was
the way that Wheezy came into Felicia's life.
Short, fat, asthmatic and crotchety, she grumbled incessantly because
there wasn't anything so modern as a sewing machine in the house and
said that for her part she didn't see how people thought they could get

along on nothing except what had done for their ancestors, that she
certainly couldn't.
"Haven't you any ancestors?" Felice asked her eagerly. The Wheezy
snorted.
"Of course. And they have been poor but they were honest," she added
deeply.
Which Felice repeated gravely to Grandy in the garden and added
eagerly, "Were our ancestors poor but honest?"
He smiled grimly.
"I shouldn't say," he answered her curtly, "that they were either
conspicuously poor or conspicuously honest."
The Wheezy not only remodeled ancient dresses into stiff pinafores for
Felice but she had to make the cushions that fitted in the dog hampers,
down-stuffed oval affairs covered with heavy dull blue silk. The
Wheezy sputtered that she couldn't see why "under the shining heavens,
dogs should sleep on things traipsed out like comp'ny bedroom
pin-cushions with letters tied onto their collars--"
Which so puzzled Felice that on one of those furtive occasions when
she managed a few words with Zeb she demanded an answer. Zeb
slapped his sides and chuckled.
"Because, Missy, putting on the frills and writing out the pedigree in
French like he does makes folks pay jes' about twict as much for those
dogs--"
Which was very bewildering, for Felice had not the remotest idea