Polly nodded her gray curls and smiled tenderly.
“And who would get my son, the senator, a drink of water when he cried for it?” gayly propounded Sally.
Pelleas and I were silent. The evenings that we spent together in the nursery were bitterly long ago.
“Ah, well,” said Miss Lillieblade with a little sigh, “I could come, at any rate.”
For a moment she was silent. “Let’s dance again!” she cried.
We danced a six-step—those little people could play anything that we asked for—and then, to rest, we walked through a minuet, Pelleas playing a double rôle. And thereafter we all sat down and shook our heads at the music and pretended to be most exhausted, and I was glad that the rest pretended for I really was weak with fatigue and so was Pelleas. For half an hour we sat about the fire, Miss Willie with her face constantly upon the andiron though she recalled more delightful things than anybody.
“Then there was Aunt Effié in Vermont,” she had just said, her voice cracking deliciously on its high tones, “who cooked marvelously. And when the plain skirts came in she went about declaring that she would never have one that wasn’t full, because she couldn’t make a comforter out of it afterward!”
At that mention of marvelous cookery and in the laugh which followed, Pelleas and I slipped without. For we were suddenly in an agony of foreboding, realizing horribly that we had not once heard the area-bell ring. And if the ices and cakes had been left outside it would probably be true that by now they had gone to the poor.
The back stairway was dark for Nichola always extinguishes all the lower lights when she goes out. We groped our way down the stairs as best we might, Pelleas clasping my hand. We were breathing quickly, and as for me my knees were trembling. For the first time the enormity of our situation overcame me. What if the ices had not come? Or had been stolen? What about plates? And spoons? Where did Nichola keep the best napkins? And after all Sally was Madame Sarah Chartres, whose entertainments were superb. All this flooded my spirit at once and I clung to Pelleas for strength.
“Pelleas,” I murmured weakly, “did the ice-cream man promise to have it here in time?”