As for Felice, her victories were humbler—they were small, silent victories over Self. In the long hours while she sat sewing she fought out her little battle—the battle of hating uncongenial toil. It was not easy, for she had an honest hatred of it.
Not even the goal in sight could make her like being a "by-the-day." Moreover as she grew wiser in the matter of reckoning she realized the utter impossibility of actually earning, with her hands, the appalling sum that she owed. She could only work on blindly from day to day, hoping, hoping against hope that she would find the Portia Person. She never gave that up. Long hours after her day's work was over she kept following elusive trails that led nowhere. She would never admit defeat in that respect. She would find him and she was sure that he could solve the difficulties that beset her.
Slowly she was evolving a philosophy of life. It began with a bitter feeling that she had been cheated, that Grandy hadn't been fair to her, to let her grow up so ignorant of life, so ignorant of the ways to earn a living. But gradually she began to discover that neither Grandy nor Mademoiselle nor Maman herself could have taught her to live.
"It's my stub, stub, stubborn way—" she chided herself, "I won't let any one tell me—I think it's only when I work that I learn—Work! that's the thing to learn with—it's like the 'Binnage'—the second digging of the garden to make things grow—its not pleasant but after all—it must be done."
Next she found out that it wasn't enough to work—you must like to do it! Janet now, she liked to clean—and so she did it beautifully, did it superlatively, whereas when Dulcie or Felice tried, it was only half done. So Felice set herself to "like to" be a "by-the-day."
And that was the time she discovered that to like to do anything you must make it genuinely amusing.
"We should be immensely gay when we're working, shouldn't we, Dulcie?" she asked one evening when they leaned far out of the windows to watch the ships in the harbor. "Think how gay the sailors are. I remember one who whistled while he cleaned the deck—he did it very quickly, much more quickly than the stupid boys who didn't whistle—I think when I sew I shall whistle,—not aloud—" she laughed, "it would wake folks' babies! But in my heart—"
She watched Janet vigorously sweeping the area-way.
"Look Dulcie, it's not the way that she does it that matters—you and
I brush as hard—but it's because it's Janet brushing—the broom acts
as though it were Janet instead of just a broom—isn't it delightful?
I shall have to make my needle me—and you shall—"
They were silent. All had not been victory for poor Dulcie. There was the model stand and the tools and the "wet mud," but the part of Dulcie that had wanted to create seemed dead—it seemed to have died back there that day when she had tried to die in "Aunt Jen's" house. Morning after morning when Felice went away she would encourage her. She would assure her that when she came back at night she would hear Dulcie calling "It's begun." But alas, it never was—it was only by keeping madly, tempestuously busy at other things that Dulcie endured the nag of some of those April days. Sometimes she gave up entirely, flung herself prostrate on the sofa under the dormer windows and wept until she was no longer Dulcie, until she was merely a limp rag of a human who wouldn't even speak to Felice, who actually cursed when Janet tried to bring her soup.