"He is doing vairee nicely. His leg is better. It's only his spirit that's rather drowned, so I thought if he had a joy-ride and we took him home—"
At least Janet found comfort from the fact that the Painter Boy was the last pauper to be added to the list—there weren't any rooms or beds for any more! But the house hummed with their activities, rang with their arguments and theories, echoed with their laughter—and sighed with their midnight tears. They were so young! So impatient! So eager to set the river of life afire!
Dinner time was a joy. They usually had dinner in the garden and dinner was always THE DISH! Even with Janet's fingers on the purse strings and Molly's capable hands in the mixing the slender funds would not stretch to more than—THE DISH. It might be a huge Irish stew, or something Molly called Dago Puddin' (there never was such spaghetti as her Dago Puddin') or a gigantic pie made of pigeons that had to cook all day to become edible. Sometimes Molly "slipped 'em somethin'" that she claimed was left from her catering business, but usually they ate only what their pooled funds could pay for and leaned back content to listen while Felice "pretended" or scolded or encouraged them; her leadership was utterly unconscious, her calm assumption that she was a very old lady hypnotized them into thinking she was. She made no rules or regulations. She frankly let them know that perhaps they could live there a day or perhaps a century; that the length of residence depended on the finding of the elusive, untraceable Portia Person. They all searched ardently for him. They all knew that when they "made good" they would have to find some fellow who hadn't and help him. Already Octavia's motto was lettered under her lovely portrait over the drawing-room fireplace in the charming simulation of medieval script that the Poetry Girl loved to make,
"She would like you to be happy here.
You can't be truly happy if you are
making anyone else unhappy."
The days swept by so fast, Felicia brave as she was, didn't dare count them! Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, oh, it seemed as though they surely must find the Portia Person now that they were all looking! Yet each one in his heart generously hoped it would be Felicia herself who found him.
In spite of her high resolves to learn to "like to be a by-the-day" she found some days impossible.
She grew to hate Thursdays. Sometimes it seemed as though she couldn't please anybody on Thursday. Thursday meant that she sewed in households that suffered from a feverish complaint known as Maid's- Day-Out. Thursdays always seemed to be associated with worse and more hurried luncheons than other days—Thursdays she had to open doors and answer telephones—she used to think sometimes she could have stood all the other days if it hadn't been for Thursdays.
One Thursday in particular stood out as a terrific day. To begin with it rained. A drizzling, penetrating, gloomy kind of a rain that brought her into the Woman's Exchange exceedingly moist, and seemed to have permanently warped whatever courtesy time had left in the soul of the Disagreeable Walnut.
"—to Eighteen Willow Court—" grumbled the cross old woman sliding a card with the address across the littered counter to Felice.
One comfort was, Willow Court was not far and the "Eighteen" was emblazoned in enormous gilt letters over an elaborate plate-glass entrance. It was Felice's first apartment house experience. She walked with humble awe through an enormous mirrored hallway lined with the largest, dustiest, artificial foliage that ever disgraced vegetation.