When the time comes for you to go out of this world you will have found that so little in it really matters and that everything in it matters so much! It is not until we are ready to go that we know how precious is the thing within us that men call—self. It is made up of all the loves and hates and good and bad of the men and women who went before us. It does not really belong to us. It belongs to all of the people who will come after us. There happened to be only a little of me left to give you, Felice, but the part that is left is the happy part—the rest of me was lost a long time ago. And the titles and the names that they called me were not any of them so dear as the one you gave me—that is
MAMAN.
Which think you Felicia Day loved more? That letter or the thick old parchments that told her that she was the great-great-granddaughter of a king?
It was the end of June. If you wanted to get little Miss By-the-Day to sew for you the Disagreeable Walnut would tell you that she'd gone away without leaving an address. If you wanted to hear Mademoiselle Folly at the theaters you discovered that she wasn't playing.
But in the house in Montrose Place a shining eyed woman made a new "pattern" for the garden of her life—for the garden of the lives of all the folks she had taken into that house. They did not know all about her. They did not know how large the fortune was that was coming to her. They merely knew that there would be enough to take away the irritating fight for bread and butter and that each one of them would be taken care of until each one of them had taught his or her particular art to provide, and they knew, too, that each one was expected to repay in a "vairee" businesslike way—by helping some other fellow. They all of them knew that Miss By-the-Day was planning to sail for France. They knew it was about something in connection with the French property but they did not know that she was planning the most wonderful "pretend" of her whole life.
The Portia Person was the only one who shared her secret—it was to the Portia Person that she always confided her troubles.
"There is a man I know," she told him, "a man named Dudley Hamilt. When we were both of us vairee young—he—liked me vairee much. But I went away. And when I came back and he saw me again he did not know me at all. It was vairee hard for me—that time. You see, I looked vairee funny and old. Much more funny than when you saw me. As funny as those little pictures Thad makes so that people will laugh.—I wore Louisa's bonnet and coat—they were such vairee ugly things—and so—he just didn't know me.—But now! I—I want to pretend something! This man—I asked it in the telephone—has been gone away for many weeks in the west on business and he is coming back soon—and I want you to make a way—to bring him to the little rectory yard some evening. It is only a 'pretend' of mine—" she blushed adorably, "perhaps, I can't do it. But I will try. I will be by the gate and you shall say, 'Here's a girl you used to know, Dudley Hamilt!' And then you'll hurry off and leave it for me—I can't pretend I'm young and pretty but I can pretend I'm—I'm a little amusing—and it will be the last night before I go to France that I do it—so that if—he doesn't—find—me amusing—it won't really matter, because the next day I'll be gone and it will just have been—a 'pretending'—do you mind helping me?"
The Portia Person didn't mind at all. He wiped his eyeglasses and coughed and didn't look at her at all. But he promised.
There was so much for them all to do in those brief days before she sailed. She took a quick journey to the House in the Woods. She rushed back to settle a thousand details about the house in Montrose Street— joyous details of which perhaps the happiest was the moment she found that the Poetry Girl had named it Octavia's House.
She awoke very early that last day of all. She still slept in the little room at the top of the house. Her modest traveling bags were packed and ready. Over the back of the chair hung her demure traveling coat and veil. But tucked away out of sight in the walnut bureau were a scarf and a carved Spanish comb. The very thoughts of them gave her stage fright. It was only by keeping her mind sternly upon her journey that she could steady herself at all. She dressed herself absent- mindedly in one of Dulcie's much mended frocks,