The black eyes stood fast, then the ghost of a smile vanished over her features; "I'll be bound she would, miss. I'll give her your message." Alone again, I turned over on my pillow and laughed until tears all but came into my eyes.
All that afternoon I waited on, the coals of fire that I had prepared for my enemy's head the night before now ashes of penitence on my own. A dense smell of cooking pervaded the house; and it was not until the evening that Fanny Bowater appeared.
She was dressed in a white muslin gown with a wreath of pale green leaves in her hair. "I am going to a party," she said, "so I can't waste much time."
"Mrs Bowater thought you would like to see some really beautiful needlework," I replied suavely.
"Well," she said, "where is it?"
"Won't you come a little closer?"
That figure, as nearly like the silver slip of the new moon as ever I have seen, seemed to float in my direction. I held my breath and looked up into the light, dwelling eyes. "It is this," I whispered, drawing my two hands down the bosom of her crimson dressing-jacket. "It is only, Thank you, I wanted to say."
In a flash her lips broke into a low clear laughter. "Why, that's nothing. Really and truly I hate that kind of work; but mother often wrote of you; there was nothing better to do; and the smallness of the thing amused me."
I nodded humbly. "Yes, yes," I muttered, "Midget is as Midget wears. I know that. And—and here, Miss Bowater, is a little Christmas present from me."
Voraciously I watched her smooth face as she untied the thread. "A little ivory box!" she exclaimed, pushing back the lid, "and a Buddhist temple, how very pretty. Thank you."