Part 22 (2/2)

Something in the level flatness of her tones almost broke the Sculptor Girl's heart. She reached out her hand and caught Felicia's and gripped it hard. She did not say much but what she said Felicia found strangely comforting.

”Why--” her reply was the breathless reply of discovery, ”I hadn't noticed till now--_how young your hands are!”_

They awoke to the dazzling wonder of the new day, a bit stiff from their unaccustomed couches but exuberant over the adventure. Almost before they had finished their simple breakfast the excited Janet MacGregor appeared.

It was Dulcie Dierckx, impractical Dulcie Dierckx, who took charge.

She was a very different person from the hysterical girl that Felicia had brought home with her two days before.

”You'd better go to your by-the-day.” Dulcie was almost saucy.

”Bab.i.+.c.he and I will stay and guard the fort. I'll show Janet all the dirt, I think there's enough to satisfy even her unholy craving--and then if she still wants to go into the deal I can go to the storage place. I know I could arrange it because I did it once for Aunt Jen; it's a bore, it takes all kinds of time, you'd hate it and--” tears threatened, ”unless I'm doing something for my keep I can't stay.”

Little Miss Day agreed gratefully. She departed with tactful discretion before Janet and Dulcie began their argument. Which was some argument! But in the end they came to something like a feasible plan and when they did--! Ah! if you could have seen what those two accomplished that day! Each put the other on her mettle. They did wonderful team work. Janet agreed readily enough when she saw the ma.s.sive furniture that she had ample security. Dulcie fairly browbeat the storage manager, and between the two of them they actually arranged for a small van load of furniture to be delivered at Montrose Place before dark. As for the rest of it, Dulcie had a wrist-watch, that for all we know is still reposing in the dusty p.a.w.nbroker's at which she cheerfully hocked it. She'd always wondered why she had it and I don't believe she ever remembered to go back for it. And Janet had a nephew, a cross-eyed nephew, who was an odd-job man. Can't you see Dulcie buying the bags of creamy kalsomine and the brushes and Janet packing up her pails and scrubbing things?

There never was such a polis.h.i.+ng, such a mopping, such a scrubbing such a--whisper!--fumigating--since the old house had been built!

They'd sense enough not to try too much. They confined their efforts to the nursery, Janet's bas.e.m.e.nt room and Mademoiselle's old quarters.

Dulcie knew she mustn't touch the shepherdesses there. Felice had told her about the battle royal with the sponge, but in the nursery--well, the crossy-eyed nephew couldn't work fast enough to suit Dulcie. She feverishly grabbed a brush herself and slashed about delightedly in kalsomine. Janet bossed the nephew and Dulcie, Dulcie bossed Janet and the nephew, the nephew nearly uncrossed his eyes from trying to follow all the instructions the two shouted at him.

At quarter after six when Miss By-the-Day climbed slowly up the stairs, reaching out delightedly for Bab.i.+.c.he, who had been sleeping in the top-most niche of the stair, two tired and aching women flung open the door of the nursery. They were smiling. Neither of them could think of a thing to say, but a curious mingling of odors told their story for them. The freshness of the clean, scarcely-dried, kalsomine, the faint tinge of smoke from the bit of fire, the delicious soapy cleanliness and a wholesome whiff of barley broth floated out into the dusty hallway to the little person on the stairs. She looked through the doorway and saw clean walls, creamy yellow; windows that glistened, a glowing fire, a tiny table spread for two--Janet knew her place!--Grandy's fat sofa under the dormer windows, the stately hall table flat against the side wall, Maman's chaise-longue, the slender chaise-longue with its flowered chintz cus.h.i.+ons, beside the fire--

When Felicia saw that she reached out her arms and sighed contentedly, rapturously--

”Oh! it's home--it's really home--”

Who shall say which of them won the greater triumph in those mad April days? Sometimes it seemed as though it must be the valiant Janet, who fought with soap and brushes and won Gargantuan victories over squalor and filth. Sometimes it seemed as though it were the belligerent Dulcie, who bravely tried to forget that she had ever wept over ”wet mud” and wanted to die--die! Why, she couldn't live hard enough, the days seemed so short! She threw herself heart and soul into the fray; she grubbed in the bit of garden, she toiled upstairs and down with the clumsy paint brushes. Whenever she lacked for pence she strode forth to the art school where she had once been a pupil in the days before ”Uncle Al” had put her money into the disastrous plumbing venture, and boldly demanded the right to pose at fifty cents an hour.

With the bravado born of her new grip on life she brazenly descended on the ”beastly Aunt Jen” and demanded and received her trunks and personal trinkets.

As for Felice, her victories were humbler--they were small, silent victories over Self. In the long hours while she sat sewing she fought out her little battle--the battle of hating uncongenial toil. It was not easy, for she had an honest hatred of it.

Not even the goal in sight could make her like being a ”by-the-day.”

Moreover as she grew wiser in the matter of reckoning she realized the utter impossibility of actually earning, with her hands, the appalling sum that she owed. She could only work on blindly from day to day, hoping, hoping against hope that she would find the Portia Person. She never gave that up. Long hours after her day's work was over she kept following elusive trails that led nowhere. She would never admit defeat in that respect. She would find him and she was sure that he could solve the difficulties that beset her.

Slowly she was evolving a philosophy of life. It began with a bitter feeling that she had been cheated, that Grandy hadn't been fair to her, to let her grow up so ignorant of life, so ignorant of the ways to earn a living. But gradually she began to discover that neither Grandy nor Mademoiselle nor Maman herself could have taught her to live.

”It's my stub, stub, stubborn way--” she chided herself, ”I won't let any one tell me--I think it's only when I work that I learn--Work!

that's the thing to learn with--it's like the 'Binnage'--the second digging of the garden to make things grow--its not pleasant but after all--it must be done.”

Next she found out that it wasn't enough to work--you must like to do it! Janet now, she _liked_ to clean--and so she did it beautifully, did it superlatively, whereas when Dulcie or Felice tried, it was only half done. So Felice set herself to ”like to” be a ”by-the-day.”

And that was the time she discovered that to like to do anything you must make it genuinely amusing.

”We should be immensely gay when we're working, shouldn't we, Dulcie?”

she asked one evening when they leaned far out of the windows to watch the s.h.i.+ps in the harbor. ”Think how gay the sailors are. I remember one who whistled while he cleaned the deck--he did it very quickly, much more quickly than the stupid boys who didn't whistle--I think when I sew I shall whistle,--not aloud--” she laughed, ”it would wake folks' babies! But in my heart--”

She watched Janet vigorously sweeping the area-way.

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