In the middle of May—I remember it was such a beautiful morning and tulips blazed in the herbaceous border opposite the window—mother looked up from her letters and said: "Measles is very bad in Fiammetta's school. Mr. Glyn has taken her away, and as soon as the quarantine is over he wants us to have her here for the rest of the summer, as he needs to go to America this month."
I couldn't speak. It was so tremendous.
Fiammetta here! for the rest of the summer! and summer had only just begun.
"Well," said father, "that seems to me a very sound suggestion—but what'll he do with Miss Sparling?"
She was the lady who kept house for him.
"She'll go off on a round of visits and they'll shut the house. We were to have the child in any case in the holidays, so it's only a month or two sooner. It will be nice for you, Janey, to have her"—and mother smiled at me.
Nice for me!
I mumbled something suitable: but I felt too strongly to do more than mumble. There was a singing in my ears and a lump in my throat ... but father understood, for he said: "It will be pleasant to have the little blue maid again: eh, Janey?" and I nodded at father and father nodded at me. Then he opened the newspaper and didn't look at me any more, and I was grateful.
"I wonder," said Paul, "how many more plays she's been to. We shall be able to act them all when she's told us."
A year ago she had come to us, this child, so utterly different from any other child we knew; come to us, and, for me, had changed and widened and vitalised the whole essential part of my being.