Chapter IV: The Unfinished Song (1)

You can't imagine anything more amusing than the satisfaction with which Felicia Day awoke. The early sun was streaming in her eyes. She rubbed them drowsily and sat up in the middle of the narrow humpy bed. At the foot of the bed Babiche awoke too, yawning and stretching beautifully, reflexing her droll puppy body and wagging her wee feathery tail.

On the floor the russet bag gaped open where Felicia had dumped it the night before; her clothes lay in a limp heap beside the window. But the clear spring air, deliciously salty smelling to the woman who had been living inland so long, made her breathe deeply.

"Ah! Babiche!" she murmured, smiling at the smudgy spot on the wall, "What a naughty child I used to be!" She had a naive pride in this evidence of her early wickedness. But a moment later she was frowning, her eyes fixed on the grimy woodwork.

"What unspeakably lazy servants I must have! I shall send them away at once! Just as soon as that woman has brought my breakfast I shall say to her,

"'You are an abom-in-able housekeeper, pack your bags and go!'"

She had heard Mademoiselle D'Ormy send a servant away once. It gave a splendid sense of superiority to think that she was going to do it herself this time. She pulled her travel-stiff body over the edge of the bed, and grimacing as she swung her pavement-sore feet to the floor, she wrapped the lovely old dressing-gown about her and opened the door into the hall. She could not think of any other way in which to summon a servant whose name she did not know and so she whistled clearly as she sometimes did when she wanted to call Bele from the farther end of the orchard.

The house seemed filled with sounds, mutterings, babblings, little cries, the heavy whirr of the sewing machines, the splintering clatter of Tony, who was chopping his wares by the basement door--it seemed impregnated with odors, smudgy, burning, unsavory, smoky smells. She whistled again.

An unkempt head, a man's head, was thrust from the nursery door, in the quick glance with which she looked at him and beyond him she seemed to see a score of persons. There were not really so many of them, merely a slovenly woman who was pedaling the sewing machine with a baby tumbling at her feet, an eight-year-old who sat on the window ledge pulling bastings while a half-grown girl cooked something on a stove that had been propped in front of the fireplace.

Zeb's phrase--"filthy dirty heathen" trembled on Felicia's lips, her eyes burned hotly. She grew furiously angry. Her breast was heaving, her bare foot tapped impatiently on the chilly floor, but the man slammed the door before she could speak.

She stepped resolutely into the hall, she whistled again, this time imperiously.

No one answered.

She crossed to the bathroom beside the nursery. She was grimly determined now, she would bathe herself and dress and go down to the kitchen and speak at once to the servant. The bathroom door was slightly open but the skylight was so dusty that she could scarcely see. She put down her hand to turn the faucet and drew back in dismay. Her tub was already filled--with coal!

And behind her a voice ejaculated,

"You no taka mine fires! Get out!"

Felicia did "get out," speeding so recklessly back to Mademoiselle's old room that she was breathless as she shut the door behind her and leaned against it laughing weakly.

"Oh! Oh! I know it is all a dream! It's too ridiculous to be true!"

She found enough water in a pitcher on the table to bathe her face. She sat on the edge of the bed thinking hard as she brushed her hair.

"It is not a dream"--she shuddered, "The back yard is real--even with all the rubbish there, the back yard is real! The gate is there--the first thing I shall make them clean will be the back yard--after all, it won't be so difficult as my garden in the woods. I shall not have to wait to find the pattern, I know exactly how it all belongs. And I know that about this whole house. I shall"--she grew more determined, "make it all as it was before. First I shall put all these filthy dirty heathen out--it will be exactly like making the garden--only I shall have people pulled out instead of weeds--they are all like weeds, these filthy dirty people--I am not afraid of weeds."

But all the same, when she was dressed and had begun the perilous journey downward, she found herself very much afraid of the "weeds" that she encountered on her way to the tailor's missus.

Nor did she issue victoriously as she had planned from her attempt to send the tailor's missus away.

The tailor's missus stood her ground stoutly, she even forced Felicia to give her three dollars for room rent from Louisa's purse; the woman's awe of the night before had departed, she moaned strange things about her children's starving, she reiterated her absolute lack of belief that Felicia owned the house, she laughed toothlessly over such a thing being possible.

"You tell that to Mister Grady," she scoffed, "Mr. Grady, he is goin' to buy this house, comes the auction next Tuesday--"

Mr. Grady, Felicia discovered, was the rent collector; this fact at last was something to seize upon. If he was the rent collector and it was her house, certainly she could go and collect from him. She learned that he lived across the street, a grimy finger indicated where and she set forth valiantly.

Breakfastless, almost moneyless, her chin in the air, she marched across the street and faced the redoubtable Mr. Grady. He wasn't a bad sort at all, though it was quite evident that he, like the tailor's missus, hadn't the slightest idea that she really owned her house. He rubbed his stubby, sandy chin and hitched his shirt sleeve garter higher,

"I hain't collecting for myself," he assured her, "I only collects for the receiver for the estate--you can see 'im if you like--he's up in th' Temple Bar buildin'." He was so good as to jot down the number of the room for her. She thanked him and departed, leaving him staring after her, scratching his chin more violently than ever.

By noon she stood quietly outside Judge Harlow's door. She presented herself without parley. There was a calm determination about her that reminded him somehow of a fanatic with a great cause. And yet there was a mirthful twinkle in her eyes.

"It's been droll," she began, "I have been trying all day to make persons understand that it's my house. I can't make anybody believe me, not the tailor's missus, nor the rent collector nor the 'receiver for the estate,'" her drawling imitation of the redoubtable Mr. Grady made the Justice smile.

"Oh, you've talked with that scamp, have you?" he flung the door open and pulled out a chair for her.

"I've talked with a great many--scamps"--she caught at new words as delightedly as though they had been new flowers, and he laughed again. She was too absurd, this grotesquely garbed old maid! "I haven't found the Portia Person--" a note of gravity crept into her voice again, "but I'm going to do without him--I have a plan"--she leaned forward excitedly, "I thought it out--it's as good as the pattern of the garden--the reason you have to make me pay fifty dollars for-- violating that Tenement Law is because there are too many persons in my house, isn't that it?"

He nodded.

"Then," she decided triumphantly, "it's quite simple. We must just put them out!"

"Miss Daniel come to judgment!" he congratulated her.

They talked quite seriously then. The matter of identification was not really droll, for there was literally no one to vouch for Felicia Day. He found it difficult to explain to her that while he did not in the least doubt her assertion that she was Felicia Day she would have to prove, legally, that she was.

If the "receiver for the estate" could find any of the papers that Felicia had signed for Mr. Burrel of course her signature would help, (he called a stenographer and wrote for a letter from the country doctor,) he explained regretfully that until she could prove that she was the person she claimed to be she could not actually take possession of the house.

"Then you can't 'actually' make me pay anything--those fines or taxes, until you prove that I'm the person who owes them--" She came back at him so quickly that she took his breath away.

"Again Miss Daniel comes to judgment!" he teased her. She put him in an extraordinary good humor with her alertness. Her persistence and her indomitable courage were such futile weapons against the armor of the law that they seemed pathetic, but her droll faith in herself and her absurd comments about the persons with whom she had been talking made him want to laugh as one laughs at a precocious child.

She left as abruptly as she had come, tucking Babiche under her arm in a deliciously matter-of-fact way.

"Good morning, Miss Day," he called after her.

She paused, she blushed furiously, she had forgotten Mademoiselle's manners. But she made up for it. She dropped him the most amusing curtsy with an upward glance like that of the one-eyed scrub woman who had been cleaning the corridor.

"Good marnin', yer Honor!" she groaned exactly like that rheumatic soul. He laughed silently, his head thrown back on his shoulders. How could he know that she couldn't help "pretending" that she was everybody she listened to!

"And she looks like a little old tramp," he recounted at luncheon to a friend, "Most extraordinary person, one minute she puts a lump in your throat--you're so sorry for her you could curse, and the next--Lordy! the next minute you wonder at her impertinence--it's not exactly impertinence either,--it's absolute frankness."

"No manners, eh?" suggested his friend.

"No manners at all. A manner," said the Justice neatly.

Back in the little hall room she sat dizzily on the edge of the bed and divided the last of Margot's dry sandwiches with Babiche. They were both ravenously hungry. Felicia turned the few coins out of Louisa's old purse and contemplated them. Wherever she had turned in these two busy days she had had to pay, she was perpetually asked for money.

And quite surely she must have some more. She couldn't ask Margot, and the "receiver for the estate" would give her none. She stared at the smug faced shepherdesses.

"Where," she thought, "Do persons get money?"

The shepherdesses smiled back stupidly.

Babiche answered her really. Having all there was to eat the wee dog settled herself uncomfortably on the thin pillow.

"If I knew where the Wheezy was I'd have her make you a cushion--oh! oh! Babiche! How stupid I've been! The Wheezy got money, Mademoiselle used to give it to her from Maman's purse, two dollars every day--for sewing--why, Babiche, I can sew beautifully--much better than the Wheezy!"

It was a delightful moment, a self-reliant, decisive moment. Her eyes sparkled, she caught up the ugly bonnet, she could hardly hurry fast enough to find The Woman's Exchange and Employment Agency. She even remembered the sign in the window.

"Applications for work received Tuesdays and Fridays." She was so glad that it was Friday that she could have whistled. So down the stairs they went again, the little dog and mistress, and straight around the corner, past the old church, there they stopped for Felicia to read what she hadn't stopped to read before,

"THIS PROPERTY FOR SALE OR TO LET
SUITABLE FOR GARAGE
OR MOVING PICTURES
APPLY YOUR OWN BROKER"

She stumbled around uncollected garbage, she waited impatiently for impudent children to move out of her way, she thrilled with rage at the sordid world about her.

"That pattern of it all is gone--I can't see how it was unless I close my eyes," she thought.

But when she came to the faded sign "WOMAN'S EXCHANGE AND EMPLOYMENT AGENCY" she smiled. For that at least was exactly as it had been save that it looked tinier and dingier than it had in the old days. She opened the iron-grilled door, her eager heart anticipating the tinkling jangle of the spring bell at the rear, and when the shadowy curtains parted and a grizzled head, surmounted by gold-rimmed spectacles tucked above a worried forehead appeared, Felicia could have cried out with delight.

For there was the Disagreeable Walnut, limping more painfully than she had used to limp, blinking more uncertainly than she had used to blink. Her rasping voice came thinner and more peevish than it had twenty years ago but she called out just the same,

"Well, what's your business?"

Felicia listened dreamily; she seemed to be absorbing the whole shop, the dusty shelves lined with useless "fancy" work, into whose fashioning no fancy at all had crept; the cracked show counters filled with pasty china daubed with violets and cross-eyed cupids,--propped up rakishly in the very front of the dustiest, most battered case of all the fat string dolly leaned despondently and smiled her red floss smile.

"Oh, how you've lasted!" breathed Felicia.

"What?" shrilled the Disagreeable Walnut, blushing under her shriveled skin.

"I mean--the little person made of string--" murmured Felicia abashed. "I saw her here--when we came for The Wheezy--Mademoiselle D'Ormy and I."

The Disagreeable Walnut snorted.

"Oh, that Mademoiselle D'Ormy," she squinted through her adjusted glasses, her shaking, purple-veined hands fumbling with the silk that was wound around the bows to protect her thin old temples, "She hain't been here this long while, have you seen her?"

"Do you know me?" demanded Felicia stepping very close.

"Don't know as I do--yet it seems like I did too--you hain't been here in a long while, have ye?"

"Don't you remember--I lived in that same house where Mademoiselle D'Ormy stayed--she brought me in here when I was a little girl--when we came to get the Wheezy to sew--"

The Disagreeable Walnut shook her head.

"I never knew anybody named Wheezy."

"The Wheezy was fat--" Felicia puffed out her chest, tilted her chin downward and hunched up her shoulders like the Wheezy. She cleared her throat and panted and let her breath come sighingly through her pursed lips, "She couldn't see why under the shining canopy the Major had her make c-cushions for the dogs--"

The shop keeper nodded her recognition of The Wheezy.

"Oh, you mean Sophia Pease--dear! dear!" she wiped her eye glasses tremblingly, "She's been out to the Baptist Home for the Aged this long whiles. Her eyes went back on her--a nice sewer, as nice a sewer as we ever had--dear, dear! I don't know when anybody asked me about Sophia Pease--she made them dolls you was just mentioning--" she motioned toward the disconsolate string toy--"dear, dear! she made them even after she couldn't see for regular sewing--"

"Now can't you remember me?" reiterated Felicia pleadingly.

The Disagreeable Walnut shook her head.

"Can't say as I do--"

"But I am Felice--the little girl who came with Mademoiselle D'Ormy to get Miss Pease--can't you see that I am?"

The old woman's tittering laugh of denial made Felicia want to shake her.

"That child--why you hain't she--she wouldn't be the matter of half your age--you must be thirty-five or forty, hain't ye? She grew up and run away like the rest of her women folks--" she giggled sardonically, "Was a young limb, she was, I used to hear her whistling at them choir boys next door--a young limb--all the girls in that family was man- chasers--the mother run off with the rector's son--younger'n she was-- by a good two years I should say, she must ha' been thirty if she was a minute--but pretty--prettier n' her mother--ever see the mother, Miss Trenton--Miss Montrose that was?"

"Did you?" breathed Felicia. "Oh, did you see Grandy's Louisa?"

"Did I ever see her?" the Disagreeable Walnut leaned her sharp elbows on the show case. "I see her when she was a bride--I'd just took charge here then--she was a high-stepper! The Major hadn't a penny when she married him but she had all the Montrose money and she got him--some say as she told him if he'd marry her she'd live on what he earned--but I guess he couldn't have earned the matter of her shoe strings--not the way she dressed--she was stylish and tasty in her dress--and then she eloped--with that lawyer fellow--some says she didn't elope with him, but she went off for some French property her mother had left her--but I dunno--she was an awful high-stepper. All I know is that after she was dead and the Major brought Miss Octavia home--"

"Did you see Maman? Did you?" Felicia could hardly breath, "Did you see Octavia--wasn't she sweet? Wasn't she darling--didn't you love her, love, love her?"

"Too high-stepping!" sniffed the old woman, "Whole lot of 'em was too high-stepping for me--never liked any of 'em--"

"She didn't step at all--" Felicia's anger was rising, "She just stayed in her bed and stayed in her bed--how dare you say you--oh! oh!" Color burned in her pale cheeks, "I won't have you say such things--"

"Well, I hain't quarreling with you about them folks," said the Disagreeable Walnut sententiously, "They're all dead and buried anyhow. And pore Sophia Pease might jes' as well be--mewed up in that Baptist home where her friends, if she's got any, can't see her excepting on Sundays--my stars! I wouldn't go to live in that Home, no sir, I wouldn't--nor I wouldn't want to live at the--"

"Can you tell me," Felicia broke in upon this flood of opinions, "Where I could go to see Miss Pease?"

"I'm telling you--the Baptist Home--"

"I do think she'd know me," Felicia murmured thoughtfully. "I do think she would." She moved toward the door, intent upon trying to see Miss Pease.

But the Disagreeable Walnut, for all that she was old, was quite capable of handling her job. She called petulantly after her retreating caller.

"What was you coming in for--anything you wanted to buy?"

Felicia turned.

"How stupid I am to forget. I came because it was Friday, you know, I wanted to have some work, please. For two dollars a day and lunch."

The shop keeper pulled a dusty ledger toward her.

"Are you registered or new?"

"I--I think I'm new, I'm not registered."

The ledger was pushed around toward her, the shop keeper reached fretfully for the spattered ink bottle.

"By the day or home work?"

"By the day," said Felicia decisively.

"Then sign here," a trembling finger indicated the line.

It was a new page. No one had signed it yet. At the top was printed,

NAME ADDRESS JOB APPLIED FOR DATE Mrs. or Miss.

And Felicia wrote, guiding the rusty pen carefully. Last of all, she wrote just after the printed Miss, in firm letters, "By The Day," and pushed back the book.

The Disagreeable Walnut pursed her lips, she couldn't really see anything through the blur of her glasses.

The bell jangled, a brisk old person, much like the Disagreeable Walnut, save that she looked agreeable, entered breathlessly.

"Sorry I was late," she dumped various bundles on the counter, "How'd you make out, Susan?" She eyed Felicia as she began pulling at her gloves. "Did my sister find what you wanted?"

"She wants work," quavered Susan, considerably less reliant than she'd been a moment before. "I dunno where the work book is. I declare I can't keep track of where you put things, Sarah--is there anybody could use her? She wants sewing."

The brisk person swung the book around glancing at it capably as she removed her hat.

"Oh, you've signed it in the wrong place. You should have put your name there--not the way you were going to work"--her finger rested on the place Felicia had written. "What is your name? Your name isn't Miss By-the-Day is it?" she asked good-humoredly.

"Why, I think it is," Felicia smiled back, "I think it will have to be--it's Day," she added shyly.

"Miss or Mrs.?"

"Miss."

"And what kind of work, please?"

"Like the Wheezy--sewing--for two dollars a day and lunch"--she repeated it like a lesson.

"There's a day a week at 440 Linton Avenue--Mrs. Alden's, perhaps you could go there. Have you references?"

"I don't even know what they are," Miss By-the-Day replied.

The brisk person laughed.

"Well you must have an address, where do you live?"

"In my own house," her chin lifted proudly, "Montrose Place."

"But if you have a house," the interrogator's voice was kindly if her words were severe, "we can't possibly give you work. You see, our work is for persons who have no other means of support, no other ways of making their living."

Felicia's lips quivered.

"I haven't, that's why I came. You see it's all taxes and assessments and fines and--it's so fearfully dirty and I haven't any money"--she held out Louisa's reticule a bit ruefully. "You can see I haven't."

"I see"--the brisk person stepped back to the telephone. She was thoughtful as she waited for her connection. She talked quietly, murmuring things about some one who looked thoroughly responsible. Presently she wrote down an address that she handed to Felicia. "You must be there at eight o'clock in the morning, can you do that, Miss By-the-Day?"

"There's something else I'd like you to write--it's the place where Miss Pease lives--"

"You can't go to see her except Sundays," Miss Sarah cautioned her. "They're strict."

After Felicia had gone the brisk woman straightened things about a bit, humming under her breath.

"Su-san"--she called through the doorway, "haven't we seen that woman somewheres? She looks awful familiar." Miss Susan grunted.

"She tried to make out she knew me, but I dunno--she can't never sew to suit Mis' Freddie Alden and you know she can't--nobody can please young Miss' Alden--old Miss' Alden was bad enough but young Miss' Alden is worse--"

Of her adventures "by-the-day" only Felicia could have "found the pattern." And as in the case of the garden of old, even she was a long time discovering any design in the confusing blur of their outlines. Perhaps it was because each day was like a bit of glass in a child's kaleidoscope, an episode in itself, ugly, irregular and meaningless, until Felicia's rage against life tumbled each piece into position and let them all reflect in quaint order against the clear sweet mirrors of her faith and hope and charity.

Who but Felicia could have shaken beauty from that first unlovely "by- the-day"? Seamstress after seamstress had come and gone in that impossibly selfish household, the meek ones enduring it until they could endure no more, the proud ones hurrying angrily away; competent or incompetent, not one of them had ever been able to please her exacting employer, yet Felicia, mercifully unaware of the heart aches she would endure within, walked staunchly through the iron gates, with "440 Linton Avenue" boldly wrought in filagree upon their stern panels.

The house was set close to the street but wide side yards separated it from its newer neighbors. It was pretentiously ugly with its mansard roof, intricate porches, balconies and bay windows that had evidently been added after the original architectural atrocity had been committed. At her first glance as the pert and frilly maid opened the door it seemed as though the whole house were filled with innumerable elaborate draperies and fat-framed paintings and much stuffed furniture. While she waited for the maid to announce her, her quick ears caught the nervous undertone of the house--the whining voices of children above stairs, the quick clatter of dishes in the far off pantry and a politely peevish voice that was raised as its owner struggled with an imperfect telephone connection.

"--just at my wits' end--both maids have the day out,--the children are off my hands for the day--they're going to be in the pageant--but it is awkward for all that. Uncle Peter's nurse insists that she has to go out and it doesn't leave any one to stay with him. Fred is so unreasonable about our leaving Uncle Peter alone. Of course if the Exchange did send the sewing person to do the mending I could go--only you never can tell whether people like that are honest or not--they often aren't--" The "sewing person" in the overstuffed chair looked straight ahead of her. She shut her lips together and tried desperately not to listen.

"--that's all I can promise--if the sewing person comes and can sit in the hall--I think it would be perfectly horrid if you had to play a three table--if I can't get there in time for luncheon I'll hurry around by half past two--that is if I possibly can."

Her irritable voice was still raised to telephone pitch as she hurried toward her new seamstress. It wasn't until she had ushered Felicia into the draughty angle of the upper hall where she was to sew that Mrs. Alden discovered Babiche.

She objected.

Felicia cuddled her tiny dog.

"Why, she's a precious," she protested sweetly. "She'll just stay right beside me if you can find her a cushion--"

She felt very small and meek as she sat taking her wee neat stitches. All about her the unpleasant confusion of the house surged on. The half-grown children departed tempestuously for the pageant, their mother bustled out leaving a trail of half explicit instructions behind her. The last Felicia heard of her voice was a fretful instruction to the cook.

"--and you'll have to take something or other up to the sewing woman-- some of that cold lamb will do--"

Felice wrinkled her nose commiseratingly at Babiche's questioning eyes. Babiche the elder had hated cold lamb. From the door to her left she could hear soothing murmurs of a voice reading. A carefully modulated voice that evidently cared nothing at all about what it was reading. An irascible masculine "Well, well, never mind that!" frequently interrupted the reader. At noon the voice stopped and a patient nurse appeared in the doorway.

"I'm going down for Mr. Alden's tray," she announced primly, "if he should speak will you call me?" Felicia nodded. She stitched steadily. 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 Babiche. 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 scraps 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 Babiche. 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. Babiche 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 glass 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 snatched 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 button and sighed. Babiche's eyes were pleading. At quarter of two Felicia finished a Jacob's ladder in a long purple stocking. Babiche 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 glass I'm lifting to you--" A moist red hand was thrust through the open space 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 space bravely.

She had her hand on the spool of silk, when Babiche 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. Babiche 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 Babiche'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 Babiche, 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, Babiche! Babiche! Aren't we delight-fully wicked!"

Babiche 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 assured him. Just to hear Felicia say "Vairee" mouthing it as Mademoiselle D'Ormy had done, was refreshingly different. "Babiche 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 glass of orange juice. He was too surprised to do anything save drink it, gulping it throatily and handing back the glass 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 attitude 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."

Babiche 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?"

For a full minute it did not occur to Felicia that the woman was addressing her. And when she knew, she rose slowly, even carefully, so as not to upset the chess-men.

"For two dollars a day--and lunch--" she answered clearly. She hadn't the remotest idea of being impertinent. She was merely literal. The only thing that saved her from Mrs. Alden's mounting wrath was the old man's voice chuckling from his pillows.

"And--" he looked triumphantly at his angry niece-in-law's snapping eyes, "she had to steal the lunch, by the Jumping Jehosophat, she had to steal her lunch! Why don't you feed people, Clara--why don't you?"

"She had a good lunch, I'm sure I instructed the cook to give her a lunch--"

With the annoying cunning of the old he contradicted her. He dearly loved a row with the mistress of the household.

"Cold lamb--" he cackled, "I heard you say cold lamb--"

"Very well, Uncle Peter," said Mrs. Alden tapping her pointed patent leather toe impatiently, "we won't argue. I'll pay the woman and she can go."

Uncle Peter's head dropped pitifully, his bravado ceased abruptly, he became a whining child.

"Don't go, Miss Whadda-you-call-it--I want to finish the game. She can pay you but don't go. It's my house, isn't it?" he fretfully interrogated the nurse, "I guess it's my house yet even if I am half dead. I'm not all dead yet, not by a long shot--"

The nurse stooped over him professionally but he waved her away.

"Sit down, can't you?" he demanded of Felicia, "it's your move."

Felicia sat down, two spots of color burning in her pale cheeks. She extended her hand over the knight again, bowing imperiously to the angry woman. Five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes--outside the echoes of the indignant woman's strident voice came across the hallway. She was venting her ill humor on the children noisily returning from their pageant, on the cook, whose frowsy head appeared at the stair landing for dinner orders, on the patient nurse who pattered about on errands.

"--what we're coming to--the trouble is I can't say my soul's my own-- sewing women! Playing chess instead of sewing! The last one couldn't sew and this one won't--" She reprimanded a grocer over the telephone, she sent a child snivelling to her bedroom. But the invalid, his eyes intent on the chess board, paid no heed. He moved cautiously, craftily, he had set his heart on winning. And he was too shrewd for Felicia to dare to pretend to let him win.

The minutes seemed like ages but at length, just as the angry voice was subsiding, the old man straightened victoriously on his pillows.

"Check!" he called buoyantly, "Check!"

Felicia arose.

"You play adroitly," she encouraged him. "And I'm really ra-ther glad I stole your luncheon for here comes your supper. I know you'll be hungry for your supper--"

She was outside the door, as quiet as a shadow, fastening Louisa's old bonnet under her chin, buttoning the old coat about her; even before Mrs. Alden was at her side she had Babiche under her arm.

"Here's your money," said the woman stiffly.

Felicia shook her head.

"You might as well take it, even if you didn't work full time. Of course, I won't want you to come again."

"No?" Felicia asked with a curious upward inflection.

In the exasperated silence the invalid's voice quavered out to them.

"Miss Whadda-you-call-it!--Call that woman back here, Miss Grant!" She stepped to his door. "I wish you'd come around sometimes," he asked her pleadingly, "I do admire a good game of chess--and it's my house, I tell you, this is my house, even Clara can't say this isn't my house!"

"I'll come sometimes," she promised, "indeed I will--" she stepped back to her abashed employer. "--you aren't making him happy," she murmured passionately, "sick people and old people ought to be happy--" and walked straight down the stairs and out through the ornate gates leaving a discomfited woman behind her.

There were exactly six cents left in the bottom of Louisa's reticule, --it was when Felicia was passing a bake shop and saw a child buying currant buns that she knew what to do with them. She went in and bought buns. She walked slowly up her own stairs, pausing outside Maman's door to push the bag of buns back into the niche by the stairway. And stood a moment getting her breath and then reached out her hand.

"Let's pretend--" she murmured under the turmoil of noises--the house was perturbed at suppertime,--"Let's pretend you put them there, Maman--"

Safe in Mademoiselle's room she addressed Babiche firmly.

"That woman, that Mrs. Alden is just a WEED! A weed like the tailor's missus and the rest. Some one ought to pull her right out of Uncle Peter's house! She is worse than a weed! She ought to have to be a by- the-day! And sit in a windy hall and sew and sew. And then some one ought to bring her a tray, with messy napkins and just two pieces of dry lamb and a sad tomato--and all the while that she was eating it somebody ought to put Uncle Peter's tray on the table beside her! With chicken and custard and celery and all! Yes, that's what some one should do, Babiche!"

Babiche begged gracefully for her part of the buns. They had a delightful time together.

"But I do wish," she murmured, after they'd settled themselves on the narrow bed for the night, "I could remember whether Mademoiselle ever let the Wheezy have such a dreadful luncheon--I shall ask her tomorrow--"

She did ask her, for she did find the Wheezy, just as she found anything she set out to find, by sheer dint of persistence.

It was late afternoon when she found her. The visiting hours were almost over. The Wheezy never had visitors, she was sitting listlessly looking at nothing at all when the attendant ushered Felicia through the corridor. She was just the same old Wheezy, but more crotchety, smaller and thinner, wheezing still and she turned her dim eyes toward the doorway and called,

"If you want to speak to Mrs. Sperry why under the shining canopy don't you come in? She'll be back in a second."

For several minutes she stubbornly would not recognize Felicia. She grudgingly admitted that she did remember Mademoiselle D'Ormy and that she did recall there had been a little girl, but she was as incredulous as the Disagreeable Walnut had been that this frumpy, drab looking person was that sprightly child. Felicia strove mightily to reassure her.

"Can't you remember when you used to sew for us at Montrose Place, how I called you the Wheezy and it made you cross?"

Miss Pease admitted that the child had called her that.

"And can't you remember anything else I did? I mean that the little girl did? For if you could I would do it and then you'd know--"

"She used to whistle--" the admission came slowly after deep thought, "She used to whistle real good, when the old man wasn't about."

Felicia sat down on the edge of the Wheezy's bed. Her eyes were shining. Mrs. Sperry had come back and was sitting by the Wheezy's window. It seemed that they shared the room. She was staring animatedly at her room-mate's visitor. From the opened door into the corridor Felicia could glimpse other old ladies, peeping in curiously, hovering about like gray moths at twilight.

She smiled at them wistfully, as she was wont to smile at Grandy, with her heart in her eyes.

"We're going to pretend something," she called to them softly, "Would you like to pretend? We're going to pretend I'm a little girl in a back yard who has been hearing Marthy sing--Marthy sings a song called Billy Boy about a boy who had been courting. She used to say, in the song, 'Where have you been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy--Where have you been, charming Billy?' I can't sing but you shall hear me whistle it--"

The little gray moths of women crept closer, some of them fluttered into the Wheezy's room. The twilight grew deeper and deeper, and on the edge of the Wheezy's bed sat little Miss By-the-day and whistled the songs that Marthy used to sing. "Churry Ripe--Churry Ripe--" and "Ever of thee I am fondly dreaming--"

She whistled until some one came down the corridor to light the lights. The Wheezy's bony hand was on hers, the Wheezy's tears were falling.

"Why under the shining canopy I didn't know who you was--" she muttered apologetically, "My soul, I guess it's because I can't half see!"

"No, it's because--" Felicia sighed, "I'm not really that little girl any more. Only the Happy Part of her is here--" she put her hand on her breast. "I'm really old--like Grandy--like Piqueur. I can see vairee well. I saw myself--" she paused, "in a mirror, you know, I was that surprised--" she managed to laugh a little. "But Wheezy dear, there's a man who has to know that I am Felicia Day. Will you tell him that you know I am?"

The Wheezy promised eagerly. And then Felicia whistled a while longer, because one little gray moth, more daring than the rest wanted to hear,

"I remember, I remember in the years long passed away,
A little maid and I would meet beside the stream to play-"

Her quavering voice recited the verses, while Felicia whistled, oh, so softly!

They fluttered after her as she walked down the corridor, the Matron walked beside her and the Wheezy's arm was through hers. Of course she was coming again, she promised them she would, they accepted her promises with eager queries like children.

"I'll come another visiting day--" she patted the Wheezy's shoulders, "I like to! You all are _so_ good at pretending!"

"Do you know," she told Judge Harlow in the morning, "I did find some one who knows who I am?" Her face was glowing with achievement,

"Even if you get so old that you don't look at all as you used to there's some part of you that people can't forget. Some Happy Part of you! You really ought to try it! Perhaps there is some old lady up there who used to know you when you were little! If you'd go there some visiting day and whistle for her she'd know you, just as quick! You try it!"

She went away thrilling with anticipation. He had a young lawyer there, who had a great many papers. The young lawyer explained to her that the Justice had asked him to keep track of things for her. And they were arranging it so that in another week, she would possess her house, mortgages, taxes, fines and all, and the thirty days "to straighten things" but she would actually possess it and the tailor and the tailor's missus and all their dreadful tenants would have to go out, bag and baggage.

She trotted into The Woman's Exchange at noon, positively buoyant.

"You'll have to find me another by-the-day," she announced to Miss Sarah.

"How'd you make out Saturday?"

"I--made--_out_--" Felicia laughed back at her. "She was a WEED, that woman. The old man played chess with me but she didn't like us to do it. I couldn't take the two dollars--"

"I'm afraid you aren't businesslike," Miss Sarah chided, "you said you needed the money."

"I do," Felicia assured her, "that's why I'm back for another by-the- day."

Miss Sarah found another job for her, indeed she jotted down several possible places in a small notebook whose florid cover extolled the virtues of Dinkle's Cough Syrup.

"This would be a good book for anybody so unbusinesslike as you," she confided as she presented her client with it. "In the back here are pages to write what you earn and what you spend and to keep track of the days you are going out."

It fitted nicely into the reticule. Felicia felt competent with it there. She used to take it out at night and write in it. It had double entry pages labelled grandly "INCOME" "EXPENDITURES." With the first pages Felicia wrote a letter to Margot, a masterly letter in which she bade her servant tell Zeb that the filthy dirty heathen were going to be sent away, a letter in which she warned Margot that unless Grandy were too unhappy she would not go back to the House in the Woods until the house in the city was clean once more. She explained that certain legal matters had to be attended to. The round stroke of her pen seemed to proclaim her complete confidence that they could be attended to satisfactorily. But the postscript begged Margot to tell Bele to stay all he could with Grandy, "If Grandy looks at the chess board tell Bele to put the men on it and shove a man every time Grandy pushes one--you must all keep Grandy happy." And the last postscript of all said, "The narcissi are lovely, I have them in my room!"

Which was quite truthful. She did have narcissi in her room! Their fragrance almost overpowered her. She lay in the darkness and pretended that they were in the garden and that she was lying on them. She had been most businesslike about them. If you could have audited her accounts in Dinkle's Cough Syrup you would have seen on the page where she first began her reckoning,

"INCOME EXPENDITURES
Two dollars Bone--five cents
Apples, cakes and sandwiches
forty five cents
Narcissi One dollar."

It is delightful to relate that no one ever in all this world purchased more narcissi for one dollar than Felicia bought at the florist's stand that wonderful evening when she made her first expenditure from money she had actually earned. She looked so tired and wan in her frumpy old clothes that the florist's clerk, who was a sentimental young thing, assumed she must be purchasing them for some one's grave. Even though he might be foredoomed to lose his job, he recklessly tied up the whole bundle that her hand had indicated.

"Honest, she made me feel like I oughta be giving things away instead of selling 'em," he apologized to his astounded boss, who had met the new customer on her way out, "Honest, she got me hipped!"

In spite of the "heathen," in spite of taxes and fines--in spite of the fatigue that still remained from those days of travel and hunger, in spite of the strangeness of sitting all day stitching, in spite of even the fierce longing, whenever she passed a telephone, to speak with Dudley Hamilt, Felicia found herself--happy, happy with the same haunting happiness with which she had long ago untangled the puzzle of the lost garden, happy with the aching happiness that longs to attain and trembles lest it cannot.

"Babiche," she chattered, "When I was young, like the girls in Piqueur's song I found my fun in spring forests; but now--" she was looking out across the river at the gleaming towers of Manhattan, glimpsing the jewel-like line of trolleys crawling slowly over the lighted bridges, watching the busy shipping that scurried over the harbor in the violet and bronze evening, "Now I find it in spring cities--"

She consulted the garden book much, peering bravely down into the appalling rubbish heaps of her beloved back yard.

"All of the ivy isn't gone and there's wistaria and we can make new ivies from slips, next spring it must be just as it used to be. Perhaps we can find the old benches, I know exactly where to build the paths. We will have to get some pebbles to make the paths. We must plant plenty of narcissi again, Babiche. Because some day, there might be some other girl who lived in this house and who walked in the garden and when Her Night came we would want it to be just as lovely as it was That Night--"