"Can't say as I do—"
"But I am Felice—the little girl who came with Mademoiselle D'Ormy to get Miss Pease—can't you see that I am?"
The old woman's tittering laugh of denial made Felicia want to shake her.
"That child—why you hain't she—she wouldn't be the matter of half your age—you must be thirty-five or forty, hain't ye? She grew up and run away like the rest of her women folks—" she giggled sardonically, "Was a young limb, she was, I used to hear her whistling at them choir boys next door—a young limb—all the girls in that family was man- chasers—the mother run off with the rector's son—younger'n she was— by a good two years I should say, she must ha' been thirty if she was a minute—but pretty—prettier n' her mother—ever see the mother, Miss Trenton—Miss Montrose that was?"
"Did you?" breathed Felicia. "Oh, did you see Grandy's Louisa?"
"Did I ever see her?" the Disagreeable Walnut leaned her sharp elbows on the show case. "I see her when she was a bride—I'd just took charge here then—she was a high-stepper! The Major hadn't a penny when she married him but she had all the Montrose money and she got him—some say as she told him if he'd marry her she'd live on what he earned—but I guess he couldn't have earned the matter of her shoe strings—not the way she dressed—she was stylish and tasty in her dress—and then she eloped—with that lawyer fellow—some says she didn't elope with him, but she went off for some French property her mother had left her—but I dunno—she was an awful high-stepper. All I know is that after she was dead and the Major brought Miss Octavia home—"
"Did you see Maman? Did you?" Felicia could hardly breath, "Did you see Octavia—wasn't she sweet? Wasn't she darling—didn't you love her, love, love her?"
"Too high-stepping!" sniffed the old woman, "Whole lot of 'em was too high-stepping for me—never liked any of 'em—"
"She didn't step at all—" Felicia's anger was rising, "She just stayed in her bed and stayed in her bed—how dare you say you—oh! oh!" Color burned in her pale cheeks, "I won't have you say such things—"
"Well, I hain't quarreling with you about them folks," said the Disagreeable Walnut sententiously, "They're all dead and buried anyhow. And pore Sophia Pease might jes' as well be—mewed up in that Baptist home where her friends, if she's got any, can't see her excepting on Sundays—my stars! I wouldn't go to live in that Home, no sir, I wouldn't—nor I wouldn't want to live at the—"