The good-natured Goanese ayah salaamed and, beaming upon her charge, murmured entire acquiescence.
Jan looked down at the absurd round atom who defied her, and, trying hard not to laugh, said:
"Oh, no, you won't."
"I sall!" the baby declared even more emphatically, and, lifting up her adorable, obstinate little face to look at Jan, nodded her curly head vigorously.
"I think not," Jan remarked rather unsteadily, "because if you do, people won't like you. We can none of us go about smacking innocent folks just for the fun of it. Everybody would be shocked and horrified."
"Socked and hollified," echoed little Fay, delighted with the new words, "socked and hollified!... What nelse?"
"What usually follows is that the disagreeable little girl gets smacked herself."
"No," said Fay, but a thought doubtfully. "No," more firmly. Then with a smile that was subtly compounded of pathos and confidence, "Nobody would mack plitty little Fay ... 'cept ... plapse ... Auntie Dzan."
The stern aunt in question snatched up her niece to cover her with kisses. Ayah escaped chastisement that evening, for, arrayed in a white nighty, "plitty little Fay" sat good as gold on Jan's knee, absorbed in the interest of "This little pig went to market," told on her own toes. Even Tony, the aloof and unfriendly,
consented to unbend to the extent of being interested in the dialogue of "John Smith and Minnie Bowl, can you shoe a little foal?" and actually thrust out his own bare feet that Jan might make them take part in the drama of the "twa wee doggies who went to the market," and came back "louper-scamper, louper-scamper."