Miggy came downstairs and, "I'm a surprise," she said in the doorway, and stood there in a sheer white frock—a frock which said nothing to make you look, but would not let you look away; and it had a little rhyme of lace on this end and on that. It was the frock that she had made herself—she told me so afterward, but she did not mention it before Peter, and I liked her the better for that. When I hear women boast of these things I always wonder why, then and there, I should not begin to recite a sonnet I have turned, so as to have a hand in things. To write an indifferent sonnet is much less than to make a frock which can be worn, but yet I should dislike infinitely to volunteer even so little as a sonnet or a quatrain. In any case, it would be amazing taste for me to do so; while "I made it myself" I hear everywhere in the village, especially in the presence of the Eligible. But I dare say that this criticism of mine is conditioned by the fact that my needle-craft cell got caught in the primal protozoan ooze and did not follow me.
"Miggy! Oh, Miggery!" said Peter, softly. He had made this name for a sort of superlative of her.
"Like me?" inquired Miggy. I wonder if even the female atom does not coquette when the sun strikes her to shining in the presence of her atom lord?
You know that low, emphatic, unspellable thing which may be said by the throat when a thing is liked very much? When one makes it, it feels like a vocal dash in vocal italics. Peter did that, very softly.
"Well," said Miggy, "I feel that dressed-up that I might be cut out of paper. What are you doing down there, Peter?"
He glanced down mutely, and Miggy went round the table and saw what he held.
"Why," she said, "that great heavy girl, Peter. Give her to me."
Miggy bent over Peter, with her arms outstretched for the child. And Peter looked up at her and enjoyed the moment.
"She's too heavy for you to lift," he said, with his occasional quiet authority. "I'll put her where you want her."
"Well, it's so hot upstairs," Miggy hesitated. "It's past her bedtime, but I hate to take her up there."