"Why do you stare at me? You have such big eyes!"
Morgana, dotted only in a white silk nightgown, sitting on the edge of her bed with her small rosy toes peeping out beneath the tiny frill of her thin garment, looked at the broad-shouldered handsome girl Manella who had just brought in her breakfast tray and now stood regarding her with an odd expression of mingled admiration and shyness.
"Such big eyes!" she repeated--"Like great head-lamps flaring out of that motor-brain of yours! What do you see in me?"
Manella's brown skin flushed crimson.
"Something I have never seen before!" she answered--"You are so small and white! Not like a woman at all!"
Morgana laughed merrily.
"Not like a woman! Oh dear! What am I like then?"
Manella's eyes grew darker than ever in the effort to explain her thought.
"I do not know"--she said, hesitatingly--"But--once--here in this garden--we found a wonderful butterfly with white wings--all white,--and it was resting on a scarlet flower. We all went out to look at it, because it was unlike any other butterfly we had ever seen,--its wings were like velvet or swansdown. You remind me of that butterfly."
Morgana smiled.
"Did it fly away?"
"Oh, yes. Very soon! And an hour or so after it had flown, the scarlet flower where it had rested was dead."
"Most thrilling!" And Morgana gave a little yawn. "Is that breakfast? Yes? Stay with me while I have it! Are you the head chambermaid at the Plaza?"
Manella shrugged her shoulders.
"I do not know what I am! I do everything I am asked to do as well as I can."
"Obliging creature! And are you well paid?"
"As much as I want"--Manella answered, indifferently. "But there is no pleasure in the work."
"Is there pleasure in ANY work?"
"If one works for a person one loves,--surely yes!" the girl murmured as if she were speaking to herself, "The days would be too short for all the work to be done!"
Morgana glanced at her, and the flash of her eyes had the grey-blue of lightning. Then she poured out the coffee and tasted it.
"Not bad!" she commented--"Did you make it?"
Manella nodded, and went on talking at random.
"I daresay it's not as good as it ought to be"--she said--"If you had brought your own maid I should have asked HER to make it. Women of your class like their food served differently to us poor folk, and I don't know their ways."