“What a ‘Mater Dolorosa’ Fanny looks!” exclaimed Melicent, throwing herself into a picturesque attitude on the bench beside Thérèse, and resting her feet on Hector’s broad back.
Fanny offered no reply, but to look helplessly resigned; an expression which Melicent knew of old, and which had always the effect of irritating her. Not now, however, for the curve of the bench around the great cedar tree removed her from the possibility of contemplating Fanny’s doleful visage, unless she made an effort to that end, which she was certainly not inclined to do.
“No, Grégoire,” she said, flinging a rose into his face when he would have seated himself beside her, “go sit by Fanny and do something to make her laugh; only don’t tickle her; David mightn’t like it. And here’s Mrs. Lafirme looking almost as glum. Now, if David would only join us with that ‘pale cast of thought’ that he bears about usually, what a merry go round we’d have.”
“When Melicent looks at the world laughing, she wants it to laugh back at her,” said Thérèse, reflecting something of the girl’s gaiety.
“As in a looking-glass, well isn’t that square?” she returned, falling into slang, in her recklessness of spirit.
Endeavoring to guard her treasure of flowers from Thérèse, who was without ceremony making a critical selection among them of what pleased her, Melicent slid around the bench, bringing herself close to Grégoire and begging his protection against the Vandalism of his aunt. She looked into his eyes for an instant as though asking him for love instead of so slight a favor and he grasped her arm, pressing it till she cried out from the pain: which act, on his side, served to drive her again around to Thérèse.
“Guess what we are going to do to-morrow: you and I and all of us; Grégoire and David and Fanny and everybody?”
“Going to Bedlam along with you?” Thérèse asked.
“Mrs. Lafirme is in need of a rebuke, which I shall proceed to administer,” thrusting a crumpled handful of rose leaves down the neck of Thérèse’s dress, and laughing joyously in her scuffle to accomplish the punishment.
“No, madam; I don’t go to Bedlam; I drive others there. Ask Grégoire what we’re going to do. Tell them, Grégoire.”