Part 26 (1/2)

”Will you let him pretend with us?” the child asked Felicia gravely.

And, Felicia looking at the tired face of the man in the doorway, nodded. He sat down on the edge of the larger bed and if Felicia was aware of him after that she didn't let him know it. Precious golden moments of happiness began to drip into the little room as incessantly as the silvery gray drops of the rain fell outside.

”This,” confided Felicia ”is a story about a girl who wanted to write a letter. She was a very pretty girl, a French girl. Do you understand French? I don't very well. I didn't learn it when I was little like you--so we'll tell it in English the way Margot--who is a nice fat, comfortable woman who lives in the little house in the woods right beside my big house in the woods--tells me. I'll whistle the gay tune about the girl who is going to write the letter until you can sing it with a tra-la-la-la so--and then while you make the music we'll pretend I'm the girl who wants Peirrot to open his door so she can write the letter by the moonlight because her candle had blown out.

Her fire was quite low--she was cold,” the children s.h.i.+vered sympathetically, ”first we will do the tune--so.”

Felicia's beautiful lips closed. Remember that you could hardly see her lips move when she whistled and remember how very beautiful her whistle was! Such a gay little tune, that old, old tune, _Au Clair de la Lune!_ The wide-eyed children watched her, humming as she motioned. The tired man on the edge of the bed watched her, humming unconsciously as the little song sang itself into his eager ears. Higher and sweeter and faster the tripping tune came. Felice was clapping her slender hands to give them the time and now the two children and their father were singing it uproariously while Felice on her ha.s.sock gestured and spoke the words.

”--open your door, Peirrot--” Oh Margot! with your translation that should not offend your atheistic master by telling his granddaughter what _Dieu_ really means! The tired man, who'd known the song when he was a boy, was already laughing at Margot's version. But when Felicia came to ”_Pour l'amour de Dieu_” and merrily cried out ”For the love of Mike” he caught up a pillow and hugged it as he howled his unholy glee.

The four of them shouted together, shouted youthfully, buoyantly, savagely, not caring in the least at what they shouted.

”Oh! Oh!” exulted Felice, ”how _de_-liciously happy we are--”

Under the noise of their merriment the outer door had opened and closed; the tread of overshoes pattered quietly along the hall--she stood in the doorway plump and puffing, her finery bundled clumsily under her coat. She wasn't very pretty. It didn't seem as if she'd ever been young, and it seemed as though she was the angriest woman in the world. And her voice thin, soprano, nasal, rose above the joyous shouting of the merry-makers.

”You didn't know how to run the sewing machine!” she mocked the little woman who was rising from the ha.s.sock, ”you didn't know how to use the flat-iron! You were much too fine to do the work you came to do! But the minute my back is turned you sit there playing with my children--”

the anger was rising higher and higher now, ”and flirting with my husband--” The man arose.

”Bertha!” he exclaimed. But even above the strident shrill of the scolding and the abrupt command of the man's voice and the frightened wail of the littlest girl, rose the cry of Felicia's own anger. Did I say her employer was the angriest woman in the world? I was mistaken.

The angriest woman in the world was Felicia Day.

Tiny in stature, absurdly dowdy she stood. She didn't raise her voice after that first cry but its deep contralto seemed to penetrate everywhere. All the petty insults that she had endured through all the dreadful Thursdays seemed as nothing compared to the unjust a.s.sault of this unfair person.

”You'd better not talk any more,” Felicia's clear voice interrupted the angry tirade. ”Because I'm not listening and I'm sure you don't know yourself what you're saying. All day long I've been wondering what I could pretend you were like. First I pretended you were a big coa.r.s.e zinnia. I don't like zinnias at all but some people do--they are gay and bold. Part of the time I thought I'd pretend you were a weed--a rather pretty weed that chokes flowers out if you don't watch it--but you aren't even as much use as a weed--”

Her employer gave a little scream. She stepped closer to her husband and shook his arm a little. He was staring, as though hypnotized, at Felice.

”Stop her! Make her stop!” the woman screamed. ”She's insulting me!

Make her stop!”

He pulled himself together.

”Of course you must stop!” he spoke sternly as though he were speaking to a naughty child. ”You must be out of your wits to talk that way!

You'd--you'd better go--” he ended tamely.

”Much better,” Felicia agreed. ”But I'd much better go after I get through telling her what I'm going to pretend she is! She's exactly like the Black Blight--that horrid black thing that makes the green leaves droop and the gay little flowers shrivel up--there's only one thing to do to keep it from killing the whole garden--that's to burn it out with coals!”

”Stop that!” the man commanded sharply.

Felicia coolly folded her arms.

”I can't,” she answered quietly, ”not till I'm through. For I've started now. Besides--” her eager words tumbled more gently now, ”all the morning through she told me about things I didn't know--things of which I was ignorant. She thought it vairee dreadful that I did not know how to work with a flat-iron--she thought it vairee stupid that I could not manage the sewing machine--and I was ashamed because I did not know vairee much--and I would be glad if she would tell me how to do these things I do not know. Now, I know something that she does not know--” she stepped very close to the amazed woman, ”something I think--she will like to hear about--” a cooing sweetness crept into Felicia's tones, the naive earnestness, the gentle candor of her appeal, silenced both the man and the woman. ”She will like to hear about the way to be a mother. I know exactly the way--it's like this-- it isn't a bit like the way you do it--” her clear eyes looked straight into those of the awed person before her. ”The way you do it is not at all pretty--not at all amusing--you shout and scold and fret and 'don't--don't don't'--all the time! That's not the way to be a mother!” Felicia's eyes grew tender, her hand touched the woman's hand and patted it rea.s.suringly. ”I'll tell you the vairee best way to be a mother--evairy morning you have some one make you vairee, vairee pretty with a little lace cap and a rosy pillow--you must stay in your bed and wait till your children come to see you and then you must smile at them and speak vairee softly--this way, saying 'Go out in the garden and be happy, my dears!' And when they come back to you at twilight, oh so vairee happy--” her voice wavered, she was no longer looking at them, she was looking far back across the years. She s.h.i.+vered a little.

”That's the time for you to say, 'Ah, Felicia, you look as though you'd been vairee happy today--in your garden--”

The man strode toward her eagerly. He put his hands on her heaving shoulders and dragged her toward the light.