BIRTHDAYS
The big room was empty when Jan came quietly through the open door. He stopped to listen, and caught a faint laugh from the other room, and then another; and to give warning of his presence, he coughed loudly and scraped a chair along the floor. A moment's silence followed. The farther door opened a little, and then it opened wide, and Mélisse came out.
"Now what do you think of me, brother Jan?" She stood in the light of the window through which came the afternoon sun, her hair piled in glistening coils upon the crown of her head, as they had seen them in the pictures, her cheeks flushed, her eyes glowing questioningly at Jan.
"Do I look—as you thought—I would, Jan?" she persisted, a little doubtful at his silence. She turned, so that he saw the cluster of soft curls that fell upon her shoulder, with sprigs of bakneesh half smothered in them. "Do I?"
"You are prettier than I have ever seen you, Mélisse," he replied softly.
There was a seriousness in his voice that made her come to him in her old impulsive, half-childish way. She lifted her hands and rested them on his shoulders, as she had always done when inviting him to toss her above his head.
"If I am prettier—and you like me this way—why don't you—"
She finished with a sweet, upturned pouting of her mouth, and, with a sudden, laughing cry, Jan caught her in his arms and kissed the lips she held up to him. It was but an instant, and he freed her, a hot blush burning in his brown cheeks.
"My dear brother!" she laughed at him, gathering up the bakneesh on the table. "I love to have you kiss me, and now I have to make you do it. Father kisses me every morning when he goes to the store. I remember when you used to kiss me every time you came home, but now you forget to do it at all. Do brothers love their sisters less as they grow older?"
"Sometimes they love the SISTER less and the OTHER GIRL more, ma belle Mélisse," came a quick voice from the door, and Jean de Gravois bounded in like a playful cat, scraping and bowing before Mélisse until his head nearly touched the floor. "Lovely saints, Jan Thoreau, but she IS a woman, just as my Iowaka told me! And the cakes—the bread—the pies! You must delay the supper my lady, for the good Lord deliver me if I haven't spilled all the dough on the floor! Swas-s-s-s-h—such a mess! And my Iowaka did nothing but laugh and call me a clumsy dear!"