Poor Steenie! her tears ceased instantly, and her grief turned to anger. At that moment she felt that she had not a friend in the world, and her proud little heart resented the apparent want of sympathy she met with everywhere. With a very decided stamp of her little boot-heels, she marched out of the room,—“eyes front, right face,” as Bob would have commanded, though not in a spirit to be commended.
“Lastima es [it is a pity], my Little Un!” cried old Sutro, hurrying after his darling, only to have her turn fiercely upon him, and order him to “keep his pity to himself. And I want no Suzan´! I want nobody,—nobody at all!”
Ten minutes later a very wet and heated little face was buried in the white pillows, and Steenie Calthorp had settled herself in bed, convinced that she was the most ill-treated child in the world, and resolved to enjoy her misery to the utmost. Only unfortunately for her doleful plans, she was by nature very sunny and hopeful, and she was also perfectly healthy. In about two winks she happened to think of the next day’s “circus,” and before she knew it she was asleep, with a smile upon her lips.
Suzan´ entered softly and stood by the bed for a moment, shading her lamp with her hand and lovingly regarding the little maid. “Bless her dear heart! she’s shed more tears this day than in all her little life before. But she’s happy now,—happier ’n anybody else at San’ Felisa. My, my! what’ll ever we do without the Little Un? But master, he’s worried about her crying; though, sure, if he’d bothered less about books and business, and more about his own pretty flesh and blood, maybe his eyes’d a been better the now, poor man!”
Then she went away as gently as she had come; and when next Steenie awoke, the brilliant California sunshine streaming in at her window was not brighter than that within her own heart.
“Such a day, such a day! Will it ever come noon!”
“True. And all too soon, Miss Steenie, for that I’ve to do. Because, what has his lordship done but give orders for a big feed for all the people who are coming to see you show off?”
“To see—me, Suzan´? Why, not me, but all the boys. I’m not to do a thing till the very last, Bob says; and then only just ride and drive a little. Maybe they will get tired, and won’t stay till the end, so I won’t get a chance to do anything; ’cause Bob says he’s ’ranged a dreadful long program. I think that’s what he called it.”
“In verity, querida [my darling]! I believe you are the only one worth seeing, Lord Plunkett says. I heard one of the fellows giving him some talk about you, and he kept rubbing his fat little hands, and saying things so odd. Sounds like water coming out of a bottle. ‘Wonderful!’ ‘Strange!’ ‘Hm-m!’ ‘What?’ till I had to laugh. Think of—him—for a lord! Much I care to read stories about ’ristocratics any more! He hasn’t any ‘raving locks,’ nor ‘coal black eyes,’ nor nothing. Isn’t half as handsome as a’most any of the boys.”
“Well, well! Never mind him! Hurry up with my hair, won’t you, please? My! how you do pull! I wish my father’d let me wear it short, like his; don’t you?”