"Sssssh!" she whispered, "walk lightly, Mr. Architect or you'll wake up little Miss Architect—besides, we'll have to sneak by the kitchen or Janet and Molly will see us. They really don't know that I know there's going to be a party, though I should think—" she paused to sniff critically as they passed the pantry door, "that Molly would know that anybody could guess there was a party with celestial smells like that." She had soothed him somewhat even before they reached the back yard and of course the lattices weren't really so bad as they had seemed to his fastidious eye. They did deviate from his neat blueprints. Even the sullen old carpenters admitted that they did, but presently things were adjusted and the workmen had departed bearing the offending trelliage with them with absurd little newspaper patterns pinned to the tops.
Felicia was flushed and panting from having cut those ridiculous patterns. She waved her shears slowly to and fro, and the Architect shouted with boyish glee.
"Silliest way I ever heard of," he chortled, "perfectly silly, but the old ducks did seem to take to it. Felicia Day, you are a little old wonder."
She gazed up at him mournfully.
"Old!" she echoed and shivered.
"I didn't mean 'old' really," he stammered, "I just meant, well, I just meant you were—" he paused awkwardly.
"I don't look awfully old, do I?" she asked it with such delicious anxiety that he laughed. "I mean, I don't look so awfully old as I did, do I?"
He thought he was saying a perfectly satisfactory thing when he answered.
"You look just like your wonderful self and we wouldn't have you changed for worlds. Why, you're our fairy grandmother."
Her little hand crept to the back of the bench. She steadied herself.
And decided something very quietly.