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“You must,”—with rising inflection.

“Up at Johnnie Blake’s it sounded nice. ‘Cause my moth-er—”

“Ready!” Miss Brown set the metronome to tick-tocking. Then she consulted a watch.

Gwendolyn raised one hand to her face, and gulped.

“Come! Come! Put your fingers on the keys.”

“But my cheek itches.”

“Get your position, I say.”

Gwendolyn struck a spiritless chord.

Miss Brown gone, Gwendolyn sought the long window-seat and curled up among its cushions—at the side which commanded the best view of the General. Straight before that martial figure, on the bridle-path, a man with a dump-cart and a shaggy-footed horse was picking up leaves. He used a shovel. And each time he raised it to shoulder-height and emptied it into his cart, a few of the leaves went whirling away out of reach—like frightened butterflies. But she had no time to pretend anything of the kind. A new and a better plan!—this was what she must prepare. For—heart beating, hands trembling from haste—she had tried the telephone—and found it dead to every Hello!

But she was not discouraged. She was only balked.

The talking bird, the bee her mother kept in a bonnet, her father’s harness, and the candles that burned at both ends—if she had only known about them that evening of her seventh anniversary! Ignoring Miss Royle’s oft-repeated lesson that “Nice little girls do not ask questions,” or “worry father and mother,” how easy it would have been to say, “Fath-er, what little bird tells things about you?” and, “Moth-er, have you really got a bee in your bonnet?”

But—the questions could still be asked. She was balked only temporarily.

She got down and crossed the room to the white-and-gold writing-desk. Two photographs in silver frames stood upon it, flanking the rose-embossed calendar at either side. She took them down, one at a time, and looked at them earnestly.

The first was of her mother, taken long, long ago, before Gwendolyn was born. The oval face was delicately lovely and girlish. The mouth curved in a smile that was tender and sweet.

The second photograph showed a clean-shaven, boyish young man in a rough business-suit—this was her father, when he first came to the city. His lips were set together firmly, almost determinedly. But his face was unlined, his dark eyes were full of laughter.

Despite all the well-remembered commands Miss Royle had issued; despite Jane’s oft-repeated threats and Thomas’s warnings, [and putting aside, too, any thought of what punishment might follow her daring] Gwendolyn now made a firm resolution: To see at least one of her parents immediately and alone.

As she set the photographs back in their places, she lifted each to kiss it. She kissed the smiling lips of the one, the laughing eyes of the other.

CHAPTER V

The crescent of the Drive, never without its pageant; the broad river thronged with craft; the high forest-fringed precipice and the houses that could be glimpsed beyond—all these played their part in Gwendolyn’s pretend-games. She crowded the Drive with the soldiers of the General, rank upon rank of marching men whom he reviewed with pride, while his great bronze steed pranced tirelessly; and she, a swordless Joan of Arc in a three-cornered hat and smartly-tailored habit, pranced close beside to share all honors from the wide back of her own mettlesome war-horse.

As for the river vessels, she took long pretend-journeys upon them—every detail of which she carefully carried out. The companions selected were those smiling friends that appeared at neighboring windows; or she chose hearty, happy laundresses from the roofs; adding, by way of variety, some small, bashful acquaintances made at the dancing-school of Monsieur Tellegen.

But more often, imagining herself a Princess, and the nursery a prison-tower from the loop-holes of which she viewed the great, free world, she liked to people the boats out of stories that Potter had told her on rare, but happy, occasions. A prosaic down-traveling steamer became the wonderful ship of Ulysses, his seamen bound to smokestacks and railing, his prow pointed for the ocean whereinto the River crammed its deep flood. A smaller boat, smoking its way up-stream, changed into the fabled bark of a man by the name of Jason, and at the bow of this Argo sat Johnnie Blake, fish-pole over the side, feet dangling, line trailing, and a silvery trout spinning at the hook. A third boat, smaller still, and driven forward by oars, bore a sad, level-lying, white-clad figure—Elaine, dead through the plotting of cruel servants, and now rowed by the hoary dumb toward a peaceful mooring at the foot of some far timbered slope.