It was Margot who came to the rescue, sane Margot, who had collected her senses once more. She pattered across the room to the wardrobe, calling over her shoulder as she tugged at the door.
"Wait, wait," she entreated, "You will understand some day! Just now we won't talk about it any more. She's not here but she has left so many things for you! So many messages for you! So much for you to do! Look, Miss Felicia!" She held aloft a broad sun-hat and a pair of gauntleted gloves, "Just where she hung them—as if she knew you might want them! These are the things she wore when she worked in the garden—here's her wicker basket with the trowel and the hand fork— and here's the garden book—" She was standing before Felicia now holding out the treasures. "If you'll sit over there by the window I can tell you about the day she found this book—"
The hurt look was fading from the girl's eyes; she reached out her hands for these things that had been her mother's; she was quite docile as the Major helped her to the chair by the window. She had the garden book cuddled under her arm; she was holding the gloves against her cheek; she looked like a child instead of a grown-up person.
You won't have to pretend you can see Felicia's great-great- grandmother's garden book—you can really see it in the library of Octavia House if you care to ask the Poetry Girl to show it to you— but perhaps you'll like to pretend that you can see the seventeen year old Felicia, wrapped in that shabby brocaded dressing gown sitting beside the window staring at the stained title page, trying to read the faint inked inscription. Perhaps you'll like to pretend too, that you can hear her grandfather's voice steadying itself as he leans over the back of the chair and translates the inscription for her. The book's in English, you know, but that written inscription is in French.
"It says," read her grandfather, "something like this:
"'To my little Madame Folly
Whom others call Prudence Langhorne
I present this book, for I have heard
A woman can be very happy building a garden—'"
"And whose name is this?" Felicia put her finger on the broad sprawl after the inscription.
"It's the initial of the man who gave it to her—J.—" said her grandfather grimly.
"And J. gave this book to Maman?"
Margot chuckled.