The Child did not leave the room when she had finished her report, but fidgeted about the great silent place uncertainly. She turned back by-and-by to the Lady.
“There’s something I wish you could tell me,” she said, with her wistful little face uplifted. “It’s if you think it would be polite to ask my father to put me to bed instead of Marie—just unbutton me, you know, and pray me. I was going to ask my mother to-morrow night if my father did to-night. I thought—I thought”—the Child hesitated for adequate words—“it would be the lovingest way to love him, for you feel a little intimater with persons when they put you to bed. Sometimes I feel that way with Marie—a very little. I wish you could nod your head if you thought it would be polite.”
The Child’s eyes, fastened upon the picture, were intently serious. And again the Lady seemed to nod.
“Oh, you’re nodding, yes!—I b’lieve you’re nodding yes! Thank you ve-ry much—now I shall ask him to. Good-bye. Give my love to the baby.” And the little figure moved away sedately.
To ask him in the manner of a formal invitation with “yours very truly” in it appeared to the Child upon thoughtful deliberation to be the best way. She did not feel very intimate yet with her father, but of course it might be different after he unbuttoned her and prayed her.
Hence the formal invitation:
“Dear farther you are respectably invited to put yore little girl to bed tonite at ½ past 7. Yores very truely
Elizabeth.
“R s v p.
P.s. the little girl is me.”
It was all original except the “R s v p” and the fraction. The Child had asked Marie how to write “half,” and the other she had found in the corner of one of her mother’s formal invitations. She did not know what the four letters meant, but they made the invitation look nicer, and she could make lovely capital “R’s.”
At lunch-time the Child stole up-stairs and deposited her little folded note on top of her father’s manuscript. Her heart beat strangely fast as she did it. She had still a lurking fear that it might not be polite.
On the way back she hurried into the company-room, up to the Lady. “I’ve done it!” she reported, breathlessly. “I hope it was polite—oh, I hope he will!”