"It's you she wants, darlint, it's you they says can see her—it's a little girl she has—" and Felicia went down the stairway with her gift under her arms, the gift she had found that night when they ransacked the treasures of the storeroom and that she had hidden because she knew directly she peeped at it, what she would do with it.
She knelt by the old sleighback bed and took a thin hand in hers. She smiled into the proud and happy eyes.
"I brought something for her, Mary, I brought her first present. It's vairee old, it is—clothes—I found them first when I was ra-ther little myself." She talked softly, her slender fingers busied themselves with the old leather case. She held up the beautiful wee garments. Even by the dim bedside light the Architect's wife could glimpse their fragile loveliness. She protested faintly,
"You shouldn't give them away—they're so old they're sacred."
"I know they are but I want her to have them. They were Josepha's first clothes, I found that out from Mademoiselle D'Ormy."
"I mustn't take them—"
Felicia laughed softly.
"The nicest part of our all being poor together is that we can give each other anything we have. And I'm proud, proud, proud I have these for her. Isn't she—little—" she touched the tiny cheek longingly, "Oh, Mary, I wish she was mine—she makes me understand something. It's this. About the Poetry Girl and the Sculptor Girl and you and me. It's that women aren't half so happy making statues and poems as they are making—gardens—and babies—"
The Architect brought the leather case back to her door as soon as daylight came. He thrust it into her hands as she stood, with her beautiful old dressing gown about her. What they said to each other neither of them remembers. But after he was gone and she had spread out the opened case before her Felicia Day reverently unfolded the papers that had been hidden. They were such yellowed, faded papers with their ancient seals! Those papers that Louisa had found in Madam Folly's boudoir, those papers that Louisa had taken to Paris! Those papers that Octavia had tucked away, smiling to think how Felicia would smile when she found them. Indeed it was Octavia's letter that made everything clear.
Dear Daughter: