“We’ll go in to see Mother first,” said Lucia, leading the way to the sitting room where Betty had been once before, after the famous hike. The door was closed and Lucia rapped. Countess Coletti’s maid opened the door, to tell them that the countess was still in the bath and to say that she had suggested, if the girls were ready first, a trip upstairs to see “Grandmother.”
Lucia nodded without comment and turned away with Betty. She hesitated. “Mother thinks I ought to go,” she said, “and I suppose she must mean that I take you. Our special friends know, Betty, that Grandmother Ferris is—queer. She is not my grandmother at all, but we call her that. She is the mother of Uncle’s wife and she went to pieces in an accident a few years ago. The doctor says her mind may come back and she’s quite harmless. You might not notice anything, but I thought I’d better tell you for fear she says some of the queer things she does say. She can’t bear to go out of these rooms of hers on the third floor, though we coax her down to sleep in the hot summer days—that is, whoever is here does. Uncle won’t insist on her going to a sanitarium; and so she has a nurse and a maid too and they take turns staying with her. I don’t know what is going to happen when Uncle marries again, and my mother says that he is sure to. That’s one worry in this house, Betty.”
Betty nodded soberly. She rather dreaded going, but if it was Lucia’s duty, she surely could go, too. She had never talked to any one who was “queer.” Perhaps she would not be obliged to say anything. Lucia had a second thought, she said, and went to bring the new doll. This looked not a little like Lucia herself, with its waving black hair and black eyes, though its round cheeks and complacent smile were not a reproduction of Lucia, who was a little thinner than when she had arrived from Italy.
“It may amuse Grandmother to see it,” said Lucia, carrying the box which contained the doll.
Up a winding stair they went to a third floor, as imposing as either the first or second and with ceilings as high as those of the second. “There is a little attic over this floor,” Lucia explained, “which makes the floor quite comfortable even in the summer. They go up to keep a current of air passing in the attic and have to watch that floor in storms, of course, for Grandmother’s rooms would be flooded, perhaps. It’s been rather hard for Uncle to get good help to look after her properly; but now he has a nurse that used to be her maid and likes her.”
A door stood open where Lucia stopped. Betty glanced into a beautifully furnished sitting room where some one was sitting, apparently dozing in her chair, and a keen-looking young woman sat sewing nearby. The older woman started up, though the girls had been very quiet. “Is that Laura?” she asked.
Betty saw an anxious, lined face, not very old but having large, troubled eyes with which she scanned the girls, holding to the arms of her chair and ready to rise.
“Not this time, Grandmother,” replied Lucia in cheerful tones. “I came to show you the doll that I’m going to dress for Christmas. Some little girl that doesn’t have a doll is going to get it. The girls of one of my little clubs are coming here to dress dolls this afternoon and this is Betty Lee, one of my friends at school.”
The wild expression had passed from the elderly lady’s face and she held out her hand to Betty with a slight smile. Betty quickly crossed the space between them to take the hand offered. Oh, the poor, poor lady! Betty knew that Mrs. Murchison’s name was Laura. So she was expecting her daughter to come. Hadn’t they dared to tell her that she never would come?
“Let me see the doll, then Lucia,” said Mrs. Ferris, as naturally as any one, but she added, “I can’t see why Laura doesn’t come. She hasn’t been in to see me today. But she told me yesterday that she had to go to some club. Do you know what it was, Lucia? But you weren’t here then, were you?”