After dinner mother and Aunt Nettie went to call upon some ladies they hoped wouldn't be at home—what funny things grown-ups do! The baby was taking his nap, and Missy had a delicious long time ahead in which to be utterly alone.
She took the library book of poems and a book of her father's out to the summerhouse. First she opened the book of her father's. It was a translation of a Russian book, very deep and moving and sad and incomprehensible. A perfectly fascinating book! It always filled her with vague, undefinable emotions. She read: “O youth, youth! Thou carest for nothing: thou possessest, as it were, all the treasures of the universe; even sorrow comforts thee, even melancholy becomes thee; thou art self-confident and audacious; thou sayest: 'I alone live—behold!' But the days speed on and vanish without a trace and without reckoning, and everything vanishes in thee, like wax in the sun, like snow...”
Missy felt sublime sadness resounding through her soul. It was intolerable that days should speed by irrevocably and vanish, like wax in the sun, like snow. She sighed. But even as she sighed the feeling of sadness began to slip away. So she turned to the poem discovered last night, and read it over happily.
The title, “A Birthday,” made her feel that Raymond Bonner was somehow connected with it. This was his birthday—and that brought her thoughts back definitely to the party. Mother had said that presents were not expected, that they were getting too big to exchange little presents, yet she would have liked to carry him some little token. The ramblers and honeysuckle above her head sniffed at her in fragrant suggestion—why couldn't she just take him some flowers?
Acting on the impulse, Missy jumped up and began breaking off the loveliest blooms. But after she had gathered a big bunch a swift wave of self-consciousness swept over her. What would they say at the house? Would they let her take them? Would they understand? And a strong distaste for their inevitable questions, for the explanations which she could not explain definitely even to herself, prompted her not to carry the bouquet to the house. Instead she ran, got a pitcher of water, carried it back to the summerhouse and left the flowers temporarily there, hoping to figure out ways and means later.
At the house she discovered that the baby was awake, so she had to hurry back to take care of him. She always loved to do that; she didn't mind that a desire to dress up in her party attire had just struck her, for the baby always entered into the spirit of her performances. While she was fastening up the pink dotted mull, Poppy walked inquisitively in and sat down to oversee this special, important event. Missy succeeded with the greatest difficulty in adjusting the brocaded sash to her satisfaction. She regretted her unwaved hair, but mother was going to crimp it herself in the evening. The straight, everyday coiffure marred the picture in the mirror, yet, aided by her imagination, it was pleasing. She stood with arms extended in a languid, graceful pose, her head thrown back, gazing with half-closed eyes at something far, far beyond her own eyes in the glass.
Then suddenly she began to dance. She danced with her feet, her arms, her hands, her soul. She felt within her the grace of stately beauties, the heartbeat of dew-jewelled fairies, the longings of untrammelled butterflies—dancing, she could have flown up to heaven at that moment! A gurgle of sound interrupted her; it was the baby. “Do you like me, baby?” she cried. “Am I beautiful, baby?”
Baby, now, could talk quite presentably in the language of grown-ups. But in addition he knew all kinds of wise, unintelligible words. Missy knew that they were wise, even though she could not understand their meaning, and she was glad the baby chose, this time, to answer in that secret jargon.
She kissed the baby and, in return, the baby smiled his secret smile. Missy was sure that Poppy then smiled too, a secret smile; so she kissed Poppy also. How wonderful, how mysterious, were the smiles of baby and Poppy! What unknown thoughts produced them?
At this point her cogitations were interrupted and her playacting spoiled by the unexpected return of mother and Aunt Nettie. It seemed that certain of the ladies had obligingly been “out.”