"We made a great mistake in taking the children," said she, "but dear little Kittyleen was wonderfully patient and reasonable."
Flaxie twisted uneasily in her chair, feeling that all praise of the little one was a rebuke to herself.
"Yes, papa, Kittyleen was very good. I don't see how she could be so good. But you see I—why, I had a dreadful time. I was so afraid about mamma. Why, I wasn't sure when I saw her there on the floor that she was really alive! She lay there as much as ten minutes, I think, without any conscience at all!"
"Oh, not half a minute," laughed Mrs. Gray. And then she laughed again as she held up a fan, a pretty painted one with ivory sticks. "I'm afraid the owner of this fan will think I never had any conscience! It was given to Miss Pike to fan me when I fainted, and we couldn't tell who gave it, and so we had to bring it home."
"You might have left it with one of the porters at the front door," said Doctor Papa.
"Oh, we never thought of that! What a pity!"
As they were going down to dinner, Flaxie saw her now ruined bird of Paradise lying in the basket of rubbish, ready for Lena the chambermaid to carry away. Her mother had put it there without saying a word. Flaxie knew she had lost her pretty bird and could not have another one, "no, not even a feather"; and though it seemed a hard punishment, she felt that it was just.
A few days after this all the Grays and Miss Pike, with Kittyleen and her cousin, Cora Garland, went to Mount Vernon to see the tomb and the old home of General Washington. It was delightful; and the next spring, when Congress had risen and all these gay times were only a memory, Flaxie never tired of telling Grandma Gray how she had played on the tiny piano that once belonged to Lady Washington, and how "just exactly" it had sounded like her own doll's piano in the back parlor at home.
Grandma Gray listened kindly to these reminiscences, and so indeed did all Flaxie's playmates at Laurel Grove, though I wonder they did not sometimes smile at the constant refrain, "Last winter, when I was at Washington." One little story, the adventures of the runaway rings, you will find in the next chapter, in Flaxie's own words, as she related it to Grandma Gray.