The mouth of Genevieve Maud, stretched for another yell, was arrested in its distension. Her small ears opened wide. Was she, after all, in the secret? It would seem so, for the nurse, seemingly satisfied, left the three children alone and went back to her patient, while Helen Adeline at once led her small sister to the choice retreat under the willow.
"We are going to talk to you, Genevieve Maud," she began, "ve-ry seriously, and we want you to pay 'tention and try to understand." This much was easy. Mamma usually opened her impressive addresses in such fashion.
"'Pay 'tention and try to understand," echoed Genevieve Maud, and grinned in joyful interest.
"Yes, really try," repeated Helen Adeline, firmly. Then, rather impatiently, and as one bearing with the painful limitations of the young, she went on:
"You're so little, Maudie, you see, you don't know; and you won't know even if we tell you. But you are a spoiled child; every one says so, and mamma said the other day that something should be done. She's sick, so she can't do it, but we can. We've got to take care of you, anyhow, so this is a good time. Now what it really is, is a kind of game. Gracie and I will play it, and you are going to—to—well, you are going to be the game."
Genevieve Maud nodded solemnly, well satisfied. She was in it, anyhow. What mattered the petty details? "'Going to be the game,'" she echoed, as was her invariable custom, with the air of uttering an original thought.
Helen Adeline went on impressively.
"It's called the simple life," she said, "and grown-up folks are playing it now. I heard the minister an' mamma talking about it las' week for hours an' hours an' hours. They give up pomps an' vanerties, the minister says, an' they mus'n't have luxuries, an' they mus' live like nature an' save their souls. They can't save their souls when they have pomps an' vanerties. We thought we'd try it with you first, an' then if we like it—er—if it's nice, I mean, p'r'aps Grace an' I will, too. But mamma is sick, an' you've had too many things an' too much 'tention, so it's a good time for you to lead the simple life an' do without things."
Genevieve Maud, gazing into her sister's face with big, interested eyes, was vaguely, subconsciously aware that the new game might halt this side of perfect content; but she was of an experimental turn and refrained from expressing any scepticism until she knew what was coming. In the mean time the eyes of her sister Grace Margaret had roamed disapprovingly over Genevieve Maud's white dress, the blue sash that begirded her middle, the rampant bow on her hair. Katie had put on all these things conscientiously, and had then joyfully freed her mind from the burden of thought of the child for the rest of the afternoon.
"Don't you think," Grace Margaret asked Helen Adeline, tentatively, "sashes an' bows is pomps?"