"I had a little dog at Mamma Cochrane's. I liked it better than cocks and hens," I protested meekly.
"Wants a dog now, does she? Queer little woman! She's still too pale, Mrs. Clement, much too pale and thin. Fretting for her Mamma Cochrane, I suppose. Well, I'll see if I can't get her a nice dog with curly hair, that'll cry 'Bow-wow' when you pull its tail. Know where China is, missy?"
I had heard of a china doll, and my Mamma Cochrane had two beautiful black-and-white china dogs. I supposed at once that China was a land where the dogs and dolls were all of china, and I wondered if the people were of china too. My godfather laughed as only a big man with a beard seems to be able to laugh. I was sure you could hear him down in the hall and up in the nursery. It was very comforting, that loud laugh, and I became instantly communicative, and told him all I knew about America and New York. He said it took a much bigger boat to go to China, which was farther off than New York, and that there were crocodiles in the rivers that ate men, and there was so much sunshine that the people were quite yellow.
After that, whenever it was unusually sunny, I was safe to astonish somebody by saying I supposed it was always like that in China. Somehow, the image of my jovial godfather was melted in a great glare of yellow light, through which yellow faces came and went, up and down long rivers, where unknown monsters, understood to be crocodiles, tossed about in a ruthless quest of man.
Mrs. Clement, the housekeeper, is another portrait that stands out in luminous relief from a crowd of unremembered faces. Her dress was seemingly as unalterable as a uniform. It consisted of a black silk gown, very wide at the base and gathered in at a slim waist, a white lawn fichu trimmed with delicate lace, and fastened with a gold brooch containing the features of a young man with a dark moustache.
I never dared to ask her who the young man was. She was kind to me, but she kept me at arm's-length by her terrible sadness, and infant curiosity was the last thing she encouraged. Her face was pale, her thin yellow hair was pale, and her blue eyes were pale. Those faded hues suited the melancholy of her smile and regard.
Seeing me persecuted and unhappy, she took me under her protection, and would let me sit for hours at her feet in the storeroom, while she mended linen.
I read to her, and when I was tired of reading I told her stories of my past. Like grown-up mourners, it relieved me to talk of my sorrow and describe the paradise down there beside the pond and the applewoman's stall.
She listened with mild interest, and I was not so engrossed in my own troubles as not to remark the sadness of Mrs. Clement. The children up-stairs were sure she had committed some dreadful murder, and was brooding in remorseful reminiscence. They did not like her, because she once scolded them for their treatment of me; but nothing they could say would induce me to think ill of my melancholy friend, and I continued to sit at her feet and watch her in wonder and awe.
Her niece Eily came into our service shortly afterwards. She had a beautiful fresh face like a wild-flower, made up of sweet dark-blue eyes, a blossom of a mouth, and morning hues upon her cheek. She was a girl made to beguile sense and sternness, and transform the lion to a lamb. Everybody immediately loved her, she had such a delicious way of saying "Ah, sure!" and lifting up a pair of the most Irish of eyes in bewitching appeal.