Little Miss By-The-Day Part 17

She was putting new rows of lace on a torn petticoat, and so intent was she in joining the pattern of the lace that she forgot to watch Bab.i.+.c.he. That inquisitive one was exploring, sniffing cautiously as she approached the invalid's bed but a second later she was trotting hastily back to her mistress.

"I positively won't have stray animals about the house," a quavering voice protested.

This petulance continued long after the nurse had returned with his tray. Felicia could hear the faint rumble of his disapproval even when the door was closed. She glanced up in dismay as the bulk of the cook blocked her light. It was not an appetizing luncheon that that individual banged down upon the lap-board that was propped across the receding arms of the morris-chair to serve as a table. There were some microscopic sc.r.a.ps of the cold lamb, a cup of cocoa on which the surface had long since grown thick and oily, a rather limp looking lettuce leaf with a stuffed tomato palpably left from some former meal. Felicia sipped the cocoa, she dipped bits of the dry bread in it and fed Bab.i.+.c.he. She herself ate the lamb and struggled through the salad. She was really very, very hungry. She did not dare let herself think that the food was unpalatable. After it was all eaten she spread her napkin carefully over the empty plates and went on with her ruffle. There was a console table outside the invalid's door.

Presently the nurse appeared and put his tray upon it. She set the door carefully ajar.

"I'm going out for my two hours, I think he won't want anything. I think he will just doze, he usually sleeps while I'm gone. But he didn't like his lunch, so I'll leave it here. If he should call, do you mind taking it in?"

After that the house was still. Felicia finished the petticoat, folded it neatly and began making exquisite darns in a white silk stocking.

Bab.i.+.c.he lifted her small head and sniffed in the direction of the invalid's lunch tray. Felicia eyed the tray. You would have known to have looked at that tray and its careful appointment that some one had given it to the invalid for Christmas. The china on it matched so decorously. It was an alluring looking lunch--crisp curled hearts of celery, a glowing bit of currant jelly in a gla.s.s compote, half of a delectably browned chicken surrounded by cress, and set in a silver frame was a custard cup filled with the creamiest looking custard that inspired hands had ever s.n.a.t.c.hed from the oven at the psychological moment. It was quarter of one when the sedate nurse left the tray on the desk. At quarter past one Felicia fastened a glove b.u.t.ton and sighed. Bab.i.+.c.he's eyes were pleading. At quarter of two Felicia finished a Jacob's ladder in a long purple stocking. Bab.i.+.c.he was sitting up and begging with her paws crossed. Felicia made her sit down by tapping her head with the thimble. At ten minutes past two Felicia had mended two pairs of short white cotton socks.

At twenty-five minutes of three a throaty voice whispered up the stairway,

"Nurse 'phoned she can't get back until after four and would I mind giving Mr. Alden his orange juice when he wakes up. It's in this gla.s.s I'm lifting to you--" A moist red hand was thrust through the open s.p.a.ce at the bend of the stair casing. "You give it to him if he is asking before I'm back. I'm stepping across the way to my cousin's for a while--"

At twenty minutes of three Felicia had finished all of the socks save the black ones. The silk for mending them was on the edge of the console table beside the tray. She crossed the s.p.a.ce bravely.

She had her hand on the spool of silk, when Bab.i.+.c.he stood on her absurd head, a trick she'd not performed before Felice. Her mistress cuddled her.

"You can't have it, you precious little beggar," she whispered. "It isn't for doggies." At ten minutes of three, another pair of men's black socks had been added to the basket of completed work. Bab.i.+.c.he gave two hungry yelps that sounded painfully loud in that silent house. Felicia struck her again with the thimble and began resolutely putting a new dress braid on a bedraggled serge skirt. At three o'clock a gentle snore emanated from the sick room. At quarter past three Felicia smothered Bab.i.+.c.he's most frenzied bark. At seventeen minutes past three Felicia Day, seamstress, became a thief.

"One simply cannot," as Mrs. Alden remarked "trust the sort of persons one gets from the Exchange, you never can tell what they might take--"

"They" might take just a bit of chicken skin to feed to a tiny hungry dog. And "they" might lift a bit of chicken wing to hungry human lips and after that "they" might deliberately and delicately eat the rest of it and give the bone to the doggie. And "they" might crunch the bits of celery and eat the last delicious spoonful of the custard-- "They" might even do that!

Especially when you remember that except for the dry bits of lamb and the sad tomato Felicia Day and Bab.i.+.c.he, her dog, had had no other food save that from Margot's lunch box since they had left that bountiful House in the Woods.

At half past three, suddenly aware of the enormity of her crime, Felicia put her face into her hands and shook with laughter.

"Oh, Bab.i.+.c.he! Bab.i.+.c.he! Aren't we delight-fully wicked!"

Bab.i.+.c.he pranced joyously, tossing her bone in the air and worrying it.

With a sudden rush the wee dog dashed straight into the sick room, scurried about under the bed and back to her mistress. The snoring stopped abruptly. A waking snort was followed by heavy breathing. And then the quavering voice called,

"Miss Grant--if you'll bring that confounded tray in I'll try to eat a bite--"

Felicia's eyes surveyed the empty tray, her lips moved but she could not speak.

"Miss Grant--I said I'd--"

She stood before him, her eyes dropped demurely to hide her mirth. She had had the presence of mind to bring his orange juice, but when she looked up she felt suddenly very sorry. For he was not a beautiful old man like Grandy. He was wrinkled and yellow and gaunt and cross looking. He was not sad at being old, he was bitter.

Her heart went out to him, her mirth died as suddenly as a frightened child's.

"Are you really vairee hungry?" she asked solicitously.

Her low voice was not professionally low like the nurse's, it was just sweetly, normally low--to that irritable old man who lived in a family of shrill voices it sounded like an angel's. Her smoothly coiffed head and antiquated gown spoke eloquently to him of a past when women dressed as he thought women should dress.

He turned on his pillow and looked at her.

"Lord no! I'm not hungry! I'm never hungry--but what in the Jumping Jehosophat are you doing here?"

"I'm mending. By-the-day, you know. Your nurse went walking. And your cook went to see her cousin. So if you really were hungry--isn't it lucky you aren't?--I don't know what we would do." She advanced to the bedside. He made her want to shudder, he was so ugly in his long green dressing gown. With his bald head and piercing eyebrows he made her think of a gigantic worm. When he spoke his head waggled just as a worm's head waggles when it tops a rose bush.

"There was chicken--" he remembered petulantly, "I like that cold--"

"It was vairee good--" Felicia a.s.sured him. Just to hear Felicia say "Vairee" mouthing it as Mademoiselle D'Ormy had done, was refres.h.i.+ngly different. "Bab.i.+.c.he had the skin and the bones and I had the rest. We stole it, you know--"

Her confession was deliciously funny, her eyes danced laughter though her tone was demurely proper. She was really thinking of Maman lying so lovely in her bed and she was thinking how Maman had talked about amusing people when they were worried and she was thinking that this dreadful old man was the most worried looking person she had ever seen.

His grizzled hand jammed another pillow feebly behind his shoulders.

He glared at her.

"Well, well, Miss--Whadda-you-call-it," he was growing more peevish.

"You'll have to find something for me--"

Her smooth hand stretched toward him as quickly as a prestidigitator's, with the gla.s.s of orange juice. He was too surprised to do anything save drink it, gulping it throatily and handing back the gla.s.s with a grunt.

"And of course," added Felicia with perfect good humor, "I shall have to pay a forfeit--I always did when I took anything from Maman's tray.

If I was caught."

Her childishness of manner did not seem at all incongruous to him. She was comfortably ageless so far as he was concerned, a drab figure with a pleasant voice who treated him as though he were a human being instead of a sick ogre. In some mysterious way her att.i.tude suggested something that no one had suggested to him for years--the thing called play!

"Forfeits for Maman," she continued, "meant I had to play chess--you don't play chess do you?"

He sat bolt upright. His beady eyes gleamed with excitement.

"Miss Whadda-you-call-it," he retorted, "you go right over there by my desk--open the bottom drawer--there's chessmen and a board. I've been looking for four years for somebody who had sense enough to play chess."

Bab.i.+.c.he trotted at her heels, sniffing at all the new odors about her.

Felicia moved easily, she got the chess men, went and brought back her lap-board and sat patiently at the bedside.

Four o'clock, half past four o'clock, five o'clock--there was no sound save the shove of the chess men. The room grew dark--the old man impatiently indicated the light. The little dog curled contently on the foot of the bed, Felicia's sleek head bent over the board. He was no easy opponent. At quarter past five nurse fluttered heavily in, looked at the bedside and gasped.

"Why Mr. Alden--"

He waved her away.

At half past five, the mistress of the household puffed up the stairway. She paused by the deserted chair in the hallway.

"Where's the seamstress?" she demanded.

The nurse showed her.

Felicia's hand was poised over a knight, she looked up gravely and smiled.

Mrs. Alden's hat with its waving plumes was overpowering enough, but her voice, strident and angry, seemed to fill the whole room.

"Well, really," she began, "I think that's the most impudent thing that I have ever had any one do in my house! What do you think I hired you for?"