He stopped and looked at me in some suspicion that I knew what he meant.
“Have them all here some evening?” I finished daringly.
Pelleas nodded.
“And dance!” said he, in his most venturesome mood.
“Pelleas!” I cried, “and all wear our old-fashioned things.”
Pelleas smiled at me speechlessly.
The plan grew large in our eyes before I remembered the climax of the matter.
“Thursday,” I said below my breath, “Thursday, Pelleas, is Nichola’s day out!”
“Nichola’s day out” sounds most absurd to every one who has seen our old servant. When she came to us, more than forty years ago, she had landed but two weeks before from Italy, and was a swarthy little beauty in the twenties. She spoke small English and was deliciously amazed at everything, and her Italian friends used to come and take her out once a week, on Thursday. With her black eyes flashing she would tell me next day, while she dressed me, of the amazing sights that had been permitted her. Those were the days when we had many servants and Nichola was my own maid; then gradually all the rest left and Nichola remained, even through one black year when she had not a centime of wages. And so she had grown gray and bent in our service and had changed in appearance to another being and had lost her graces and her disposition alike. One thing only remained the same: She still had Thursday evenings “out.”
Where in the world she found to go now, was a favourite subject of speculation with Pelleas and me over our drawing-room fire. She had no friends, no one came to see her, she did not mention frequenting any houses; she was openly averse to the dark—not afraid, but averse; and her contempt for all places of amusement was second only to her distrust of the cable cars. Yet every Thursday evening she set forth in her best purple bonnet and black “circular,” and was gone until eleven o’clock. Old, lonely, withered woman—where did she go? Unless indeed, it was, as we half suspected, to take certain lessons in magic whereby she seems to divine our inmost thoughts and intentions.