After she had undressed and snapped off the light, she leaned out of the window and looked at the night for a long time. Missy loved the night; the hordes of friendly little stars which nodded and whispered to one another; the round silver moon, up there at some enigmatic distance yet able to transfigure the whole world with fairy-whiteness—turning the dew on the grass into pearls, the leaves on the trees into trembling silver butterflies, and the dusty street into a breadth of shimmering silk. At night, too, the very flowers seemed to give out a sweeter odour; perhaps that was because you couldn't see them.
Missy leaned farther out the window to sniff in that damp, sweet scent of unseen flowers, to feel the white moonlight on her hand. She had often wished that, by some magic, the world might be enabled to spin out its whole time in such a gossamer, irradiant sheen as this—a sort of moon-haunted night-without-end, keeping you tingling with beautiful, blurred, indescribable feelings.
But to-night, for the first time, Missy felt skeptical as to that earlier desire. She still found the night beautiful—oh, inexpressibly beautiful!—but moonlight nights were what made lovers want to look into each other's eyes, and sing each other love songs “with expression.” To be sure, she had formerly considered this very tendency an elysian feature of such nights; but that was when she thought that love always was right for its own sake, that true lovers never should be thwarted. She still held by that belief; and yet—she visioned Uncle Charlie, dear Uncle Charlie, so fond of buying Aunt Isabel extravagant organdies and slippers to match; so like grandpa and father—and King Mark!
Missy had always hated King Mark, the lawful husband, the enemy of true love. But Romance gets terribly complicated when it threatens to leave the Middle Ages, pop right in on you when you are visiting in Pleasanton; and when the lawful husband is your own Uncle Charlie—poor Uncle Charlie!—lying in there suffering with his broken—well there was no denying it was his big toe.
Missy didn't know that her eyes had filled—tears sometimes came so unexpectedly nowadays—till a big drop splashed down on her hand.
She felt very, very sad. Often she didn't mind being sad. Sometimes she even enjoyed it in a peculiar way on moonlit nights; found a certain pleasant poignancy of exaltation in the feeling. But there are different kinds of sadness. To-night she didn't like it. She forsook the moonlit vista and crept into bed.
The next morning she overslept. Perhaps it was because she wasn't in her own little east room at home, where the sun and Poppy, her cat, vied to waken her; or perhaps because it had turned intensely hot and sultry during the night—the air seemed to glue down her eyelids so as to make waking up all the harder.
It was Sunday, and, when she finally got dressed and downstairs, the house was still unusually quiet. But she found Uncle Charlie in his “den” with the papers. He said Aunt Isabel was staying in bed with a headache; and he himself hobbled into the dining room with Missy, and sat with her while the maid (Aunt Isabel called her hired girl a “maid”) gave her breakfast.
Uncle Charlie seemed cheerful despite his—his trouble. And everything seemed so peaceful and beautiful that Missy could hardly realize that ever Tragedy might come to this house. Somewhere in the distance church bells were tranquilly sounding. Out in the kitchen could be heard the ordinary clatter of dishes. And in the dining room it was very, very sweet. The sun filtered through the gently swaying curtains, touching vividly the sweet peas on the breakfast-table. The sweet peas were arranged to stand upright in a round, shallow bowl, just as if they were growing up out of a little pool—a marvellously artistic effect. The china was very artistic, too, Japanese, with curious-looking dragons in soft old-blue. And, after the orange, she had a finger-bowl with a little sprig of rose-geranium she could crunch between her fingers till it sent out a heavenly odour. It was just like Aunt Isabel to have rose-geranium in her finger-bowls!
Her mind was filled with scarcely defined surmises concerning Aunt Isabel, her unexpected headache, and the too handsome harper. But Uncle Charlie, unsuspecting, talked on in that cheerful strain. He was teasing Missy because she liked the ham and eggs and muffins, and took a second helping of everything.