He would look across the low hedge and sing out, "Where's my little wife?" I kept it as a delightful secret from all the world that I was married to a boy called O'Donovan Rossa. The world is a cold confidant in such delicate matters, and has a way of looking as if it did not take little children seriously.
But O'Donovan Rossa had a little sister of his own whom he loved devotedly, so he knew all about little girls and their ways, and appeared to understand my conversation. So few grown-up people do understand the conversation of children, and children know this.
He would spring over the hedge just like a mythical personage, and tumble unexpectedly on the grass-plot beside me, and my daisy-chains were matter of absorbing interest to him. Then what stories he had about blue dragon-flies, humming-birds, and bewitched crows! You may imagine if I looked forward to visits to grandpapa Cameron's cottage, with such a prospective attraction.
I did not disdain the rougher friendship of Dennis, my grandfather's gardener. He was a cheery individual with a very red face. He once gave me an orange and a penny when I arrived with cheeks and eyelids swollen from crying, with a conviction that I could bear my sorrows no longer. I ate my orange, and suddenly the world seemed brighter, and when I went off alone to purchase a pennyworth of crab-apples at a fruit-shop hard by, I began to take pleasure at the thought of to-morrow.
I was further consoled by one of grandpapa's shining five-shilling pieces, and then Dennis called me to fetch him a tool, shouting, "Look sharp now, and do something for your living," and I was so enchanted that all sense of desolation and ill-usage left me.
It is so easy to make a child happy that it is a mystery to me how the art is not universal with grown-up persons.
Among the blurred memories of days so remote is a ball given in the big town house. The excitement could not but reach us up-stairs beneath the stars. The nurse and housemaid were equally aflame, and stood watching the guests from the corner of the topmost landing, that commanded a glimpse of the drawing-room lobby. The rustle of silk and the sort of perfumed chatter that belongs to gatherings in full dress reached us, broken and vague like the beautiful fancies of dreams. Our little feet pattered with yearning to be down below in the thick of social pleasures, and we shouted out our recognition of each side face as a guest crossed the lobby. It was not the brilliant assortment of silks and satins and laces, the gleam of jewelled array, or the chatter that intoxicated me; it was the first blast of music that rolled up to us, and the penetrating charm of the fiddles.
I was always less looked after than the others, and watching my opportunity, I slipped down-stairs in my nightdress; I felt I must hear those fiddles nearer, and see how people looked when they danced. Mrs. Clement saw me a few steps above the drawing-rooms, and wanted to carry me back to bed; but I prayed so hard for one look, that she took me into her arms, and, skirting the lobby, went in on tip-toe to the cardroom, at the top of the drawing-rooms, where several persons were playing at little tables. Some of the guests looked up at the melancholy lady in black silk with the little child in its night-dress, staring in bewilderment at them. But Mrs. Clement placed her finger on her lips, and they smiled at me and continued their play.
They were playing "Il Bacio," and even now I can never hear that tinkling waltz without a throb. It brought tears to my eyes then, and all night it formed the accompaniment of my dreams. The only couple I clearly saw in that paradise of colour, light, scent, and sound was my stepfather, who whirled past us with a tall dark girl in amber satin, who was smiling most radiantly as she danced.