Piqueur served supper, his old hands trembling as he placed the dishes before them. A hot thin soup, that warmed Felice and made her send a wavering smile across the table, a platter of ham boiled in apple cider whose delicious odors made her sniff hungrily, and after he had served the meat the old man put thin glasses beside their plates and brought a bottle of wine, wrapped carefully in an old napkin, and stood behind his master's place.
And the Major, standing after he had filled Felice's glass, lifted his own high:
"Felicia," he said slowly, "We will drink to your home coming—"
It was all so, strange that she did not notice until Piqueur set a dish of custard before her that all the silver with which she was eating was marked with the same odd mark that had adorned her silver drinking mug back in the nursery in Brooklyn. She stared at it as she held a thin spoon aloft.
"Look, Grandy," she cried, "it has my honey bee!"
He nodded.
He scarcely seemed to heed her, already he had risen and was pacing restlessly about the room, peering out the windows, addressing staccato questions in French to Piqueur. He pulled the shabby silken rope at the doorway and a bell trilled somewhere faintly. Margot came running.
"It is good to hear" she said as she entered. And helping Felice up the circular stairway she murmured tenderly, "You cannot know, Miss Felicia, how glad we are, my uncle Piqueur and I, that the house is opened once more—you're not so tall as your mother, are you?" She was positively chattering now. Felice caught her arm more closely.
"Oh, where is Maman?" she demanded. Margot shook her head. She sighed. She was opening the door of the upper room. She did not answer for a full moment. Her lips worked nervously before she spoke.
"She is not here. But this is the bed where she always slept when she was young—the bed at which she laughed so much—ah, Miss Felicia, don't you think you will like it? See how droll—" her brown wrinkled hand rested on a beautifully carved corner post, "These are little monkeys climbing for fruit—when she was a baby Mademoiselle Octavia used to put her hands on them so—"