Annie made up a bed for Idella on a wide, old-fashioned lounge in her room,
and put her away in it, swathed in a night-gown which she found among
the survivals of her own childish clothing in that old chest of drawers.
When she woke in the morning she looked across at the little creature,
with a tender sense of possession and protection suffusing her troubled
recollections of the night before. Idella stirred, stretched herself with
a long sigh, and then sat up and stared round the strange place as if she
were still in a dream.
"Would you like to come in here with me?" Annie suggested from her bed.
The child pushed back her hair with her little hands, and after waiting to
realise the situation to the limit of her small experience, she said, with
a smile that showed her pretty teeth, "Yes."
"Then come."
Idella tumbled out of bed, pulling up the nightgown, which was too long for
her, and softly thumped across the carpet. Annie leaned over and lifted her
up, and pressed the little face to her own, and felt the play of the quick,
light breath over her cheek.
"Would you like to stay with me--live with me--Idella?" she asked.
The child turned her face away, and hid a roguish smile in the pillow. "I
don't know."
"Would you like to be my little girl?"
"No."
"No? Why not?"
"Because--because"--she seemed to search her mind--"because your
night-gowns are too long."
"Oh, is that all? That's no reason. Think of something else."
Idella rubbed her face hard on the pillow. "You dress up cats."
She lifted her face, and looked with eyes of laughing malice into Annie's,
and Annie pushed her face against Idella's neck and cried, "You're a
rogue!"
The little one screamed with laughter and gurgled: "Oh, you tickle! You
tickle!"
They had a childish romp, prolonged through the details of Idella's washing
and dressing, and Annie tried to lose, in her frolic with the child, the
anxieties that had beset her waking; she succeeded in confusing them with
one another in one dull, indefinite pain.
She wondered when Mr. Peck would come for Idella, but they were still at
their belated breakfast when Mrs. Bolton came in to say that Bolton had met
the minister on his way up, and had asked him if Idella might not stay the
week out with them.
"I don' know but he done more'n he'd ought.