My Friend the Chauffeur | Page 5

the tall white girl (the name of "Maida" suited her
singularly well) did not stir an inch. "I think I'll go on if you don't mind,
Aunt Ka--I mean, Kittie," she said in a soft voice that was as American
in its way as the auburn lady's, but a hundred and fifty times sweeter. I
rather fancied that it must have been grown somewhere in the South,
where the sun was warm, and the flowers as luxuriant as our Riviera
blossoms.
"You will do nothing of the kind," retorted her relative peremptorily.
"You'll just stay here with Beechy and me, till we've done our
business."
"But I haven't anything to do with--"
"You're going with us on the trip, anyhow, if we go. Now, come along
and don't make a fuss."
For a moment "Maida" hesitated, then she did come along, and as
obediently as the brown child, though not so willingly, sat down in the
chaise longue, carefully arranged for her reception by Terry.
"Evidently a poor relation, or she wouldn't submit to being ordered
about like that," I thought. "Of course, any one might see that she's too
pretty to be an heiress. They don't make them like that. Such beauties
never have a penny to bless themselves with. Just Terry's luck if he
falls in love with her, after all I've done for him, too! But if this tour
does come off, I must try to block that game."
"I expect I'd better introduce myself and my little thirteen-year-old
daughter, and my niece," said the auburn lady, putting down her parasol,
and opening a microscopic fan. "I'm Mrs. Kathryn Stanley Kidder, of
Denver, Colorado. My little girl, here--she's all I've got in the world

since Mr. Kidder died--is Beatrice, but we call her Beechy for short.
We used to spell it B-i-c-e, which Mr. Kidder said was Italian; but
people would pronounce it to rhyme with mice, so now we make it just
like the tree, and then there can't be any mistake. Miss Madeleine
Destrey is the daughter of my dead sister, who was ever so much older
than I am of course; and the way she happened to come over with
Beechy and me is quite a romance; but I guess you'll think I've told you
enough about ourselves."
"It's like the people in old comic pictures who have kind of balloon
things coming out of their mouths, with a verse thoroughly explaining
who they are, isn't it?" remarked Miss Beechy in a little soft, childish
voice, and at least a dozen imps looking out of her eyes all at once.
"Mamma's balloon never collapses."
To break the awkward silence following upon this frank comparison, I
bustled away with hospitable murmurs concerning tea. But, my back
once turned upon the visitors, the pink, white, and green glamour of
their presence floated away from before my eyes like a radiant mist,
and I saw plain fact instead.
By plain fact I mean to denote Félicité, my French cook-housekeeper,
my all of domesticity in the Châlet des Pins.
Félicité might be considered plain by strangers, and thank heaven she is
a fact, or life at my little villa on the Riviera would be a hundred times
less pleasant than it is; but she is nevertheless as near to being an angel
as a fat, elderly, golden-hearted, sweet-natured, profane-speaking,
hot-tempered peasant woman of Provence can possibly be. Whatever
the greatest geniuses of the kitchen can do, Félicité can and will do, and
she has a loyal affection for her undeserving master, which leads her to
attempt miracles and almost invariably to accomplish them.
There are, however, things which even Félicité cannot do; and it had
suddenly struck me coldly in the sunshine that to produce proper cakes
and rich cream at ten minutes' notice in a creamless and cakeless
bachelor villa, miles from anywhere in particular, might be beyond
even her genius.

I found her in the back garden, forcibly separating the family pet, a
somewhat moth-eaten duck, from the yellow cat whose mouse he had
just annexed by violence.
With language which told me that a considerable quantity of pepper
had got into her disposition (as it does with most cooks, according to
my theory) she was admonishing the delinquent, whom she mercilessly
threatened to behead and cook for dinner that evening. "You have been
spared too long; the best place for you is on the table," I heard her
lecturing the evil cannibal, "though the saints know that you are as
tough as you are wicked, and all the sauce in the Alpes Maritimes
would not make of you a pleasant morsel, especially since you have
taken to eating the cat's mice."
"Félicité," I broke in upon her flood of eloquence, in my most winning
tones. "Something has