At that Aunt Nettie laughed with genuine mirth. “What on earth do you think a child would know about it?” she ridiculed.
Meanwhile the child, whose departure had thus loosed free speech, was leagues distant from the gossip and the unrest which was its source. Her pink hair bows, even the second-best ones, lifted her to a state which made it much pleasanter to idle in her window, sniffing at the honey-suckle, than to hurry down to the piano. She longed to make up something which, like a tune of water rippling over pink pebbles, was running through her head. But faithfully, at last, she toiled through her hour, and then was called on to mind the Baby.
This last duty was a real pleasure. For she could wheel the perambulator off to the summerhouse, in a secluded, sweet-smelling corner of the yard, and there recite poetry aloud. To reinforce those verses she knew by heart, she carried along the big Anthology which, in its old-blue binding, contrasted so satisfyingly with the mahogany table in the sitting-room. The first thing she read was “Before the Beginning of Years” from “Atalanta in Calydon;” Missy especially adored Swinburne—so liltingly incomprehensible.
The performance, as ever, was highly successful all around. Baby really enjoyed it and Poppylinda as well, both of them blinking in placid appreciation. And as for Missy, the liquid sound of the metres rolling off her own lips, the phrases so beautiful and so “deep,” seemed to lift a choking something right up into her throat until she could have wept with the sweet pain of it. She did, as a matter of fact, happy tears, about which her two auditors asked no embarrassing question. Baby merely gurgled, and Poppylinda essayed to climb the declaimer's skirts.
“Sit down, sad Soul!” Missy's mood could no longer even attempt to mate with prose. She turned through the pages of the Anthology until she came to another favourite:
So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, There never was knight like young Lochinvar.
This she read through, with a fine, swinging rhythm. “I think that last stanza's perfectly exquisite—don't you?” Missy enquired of her mute audience. And she repeated it, as unctuously as though she were the poet herself. Then, quite naturally, this romance recalled to her the romance next door, so deliciously absorbing her waking and dreaming hours—the romance of her own Miss Princess. Miss Princess—Missy's more formal adaptation of Young Doc's soubriquet for Helen Greenleaf in the days of his romance—was the most beautiful heroine imaginable. And the Wedding was next week, and Missy was to walk first of all the six flower-girls, and the Pink Dress was all but done, and the Pink Stockings—silk!—were upstairs in the third drawer of the high-boy! Oh, it was a golden world, radiant with joy. Of course—it's only earth, after all, and not heaven—she'd rather the bridegroom was going to be young Doc. But Miss Princess had arranged it this other way—her bridegroom had come out of the East. And the Wedding was almost here!... There never was morning so fair, nor grass so vivid and shiny, nor air so soft. Above her head the cherry-buds were swelling, almost ready to burst. From the open windows of the house, down the street, sounds from a patient piano, flattered by distance, betokened that Kitty Allen was struggling with “Perpetual Motion”; Missy, who had finished her struggles with that abomination-to-beginners a month previously felt her sense of beatitude deepen.
Presently into this Elysium floated her mother's voice, summoning her to the house. Rounding the corner of the back walk with the perambulator, she collided with the grocer-boy. He was a nice-mannered boy, picking up the Anthology and Baby's doll from the ground, and handing them to her with a charming smile. Besides, he had very bright, sparkling eyes. Missy fancied he must be some lost Prince, and inwardly resolved to make up, as soon as alone, a story to this effect.
In the house, mother told her it was time to go to Miss Martin's to try on the Pink Dress.
Down the street, she encountered Mr. Hackett, the rich bridegroom come out of the East, a striking figure, on that quiet street, in the natty white flannels suggesting Cleveland, Atlantic City, and other foreign places.