A long-legged, limp-looking little girl with spectacles had come in. A minute before she had been passing the door on her way to walk, and catching the sound of a male voice in the drawing-room, insisted upon listening till she had made sure whose it was. At the name Gerald she had pulled away from her governess and burst into the drawing-room.
She stood still a moment after this impulsive entrance, and the governess turned toward Mrs. Foss a face that, benign and enlightened though it was, called up the memory of faces seen in good-humored German comic papers. The expression of her smile said to the company that she was guiltless in the matter of this invasion. Could one use 32severity toward a little girl who suffered from asthma and weak eyes?
Lily, after her pause, went half shyly, half boldly to Gerald. He did not kiss her,–she was ten years old,–but placed an arm loosely around her as she stood near his knee.
“Did you forget it, Lily?”
“No, Mother, I didn’t forget, but I never thought to speak of it. You didn’t tell me to, did you, Gerald?”
“No, we had so much else to talk about. Well, Lily, have you decided what color the uniform must be for our orphanage? The thing is important. It makes a great difference in an orphan’s disposition whether she goes dressed in a dirty gray or a fine, bright apricot yellow.”
“Gerald,”–Lily lowered her voice to make their conversation more private,–“will you be the cuckoo?” As he gazed, she went earnestly on: “We can’t find anybody to do the cuckoo. I am going to be the nightingale. Fräulein is going to be the drum. Leslie is going to be the Wachtel. Mother is going to be the triangle. Brenda will play the piano. Papa says that if he is to take part he must be the one who sings on the comb and tissue-paper. But I am afraid to let him. You know he hasn’t a good ear. That leaves the cuckoo, the comb, and the rattle still to find before we can have our Kinder-sinfonie. Which should you like to be, Gerald?”
“What an opening for musical talent! But, my dear little lady, I’m not a bit of good. I can’t follow music by note any more than a cuckoo. I am so sorry.”
“But, Gerald, all you have to do is–”
“I have told you, Lili,” said the governess in German, “that we would take the gardener’s boy and drill him for 33the cuckoo. Come now quickly, dear child; we must go for our walk.”