'I will go alone: we shall be freer so. Oh, Bess, pray that she may tell me rightly! So much depends on that! Don't laugh, uncle! It is a very serious moment for me. Miss Cameron knows that, and will tell you so. Kiss me, Aunt Amy, since mamma isn't here. If you say I look nice, I'm quite satisfied. Good-bye.' And with a wave of the hand as much like her model's as she could make it, Josie departed, looking very pretty and feeling very tragical.
Sure now of admittance, she boldly rang at the door which excluded so many, and being ushered into a shady parlour, feasted her eyes upon several fine portraits of great actors while she waited. She had read about most of them, and knew their trials and triumphs so well that she soon forgot herself, and tried to imitate Mrs Siddons as Lady Macbeth, looking up at the engraving as she held her nosegay like the candle in the sleep-walking scene, and knit her youthful brows distressfully while murmuring the speech of the haunted queen. So busy was she that Miss Cameron watched her for several minutes unseen, then startled her by suddenly sweeping in with the words upon her lips, the look upon her face, which made that one of her greatest scenes.
'I never can do it like that; but I'll keep trying, if you say I may,' cried Josie, forgetting her manners in the intense interest of the moment.
'Show me what you can do,' answered the actress, wisely plunging into the middle of things at once, well knowing that no common chat would satisfy this very earnest little person.
'First let me give you these. I thought you'd like wild things better than hot-house flowers; and I loved to bring them, as I'd no other way to thank you for your great kindness to me,' said Josie, offering her nosegay with a simple warmth that was very sweet.
'I do love them best, and keep my room full of the posies some good fairy hangs on my gate. Upon my word, I think I've found the fairy out—these are so like,' she added quickly, as her eye went from the flowers in her hand to others that stood near by, arranged with the same taste.
Josie's blush and smile betrayed her before she said, with a look full of girlish adoration and humility: 'I couldn't help it; I admire you so much. I know it was a liberty; but as I couldn't get in myself, I loved to think my posies pleased you.'
Something about the child and her little offering touched the woman, and, drawing Josie to her, she said, with no trace of actress in face or voice:
'They did please me, dear, and so do you. I'm tired of praise; and love is very sweet, when it is simple and sincere like this.'
Josie remembered to have heard, among many other stories, that Miss Cameron lost her lover years ago, and since had lived only for art. Now she felt that this might have been true; and pity for the splendid, lonely life made her face very eloquent, as well as grateful. Then, as if anxious to forget the past, her new friend said, in the commanding way that seemed natural to her: