"Why, Guy, I always thought the house was brick," I heard her say as the
carriage door was opened by the coachman.
"No, darling--wood. Ah, there's Fan," was Guy's reply, and the next
moment I had her in my arms.
Yes, literally in my arms. She is such a wee little thing, and her face
is so sweet, and her eyes so childish and wistful, and her voice so
musical and flute-like that before I knew what I was doing I lifted her
from her feet and hugged her hard and said I meant to love her, first
for Guy's sake and then for her own. Was it my fancy, I wonder, or did
she really shrink back a little and put up her hands to arrange the bows
and streamers and curls floating away from her like the flags on a
vessel on some gala day?
She was very tired, Guy said, and ought to lie down before dinner. Would
I show her to her room with Zillah, her maid? Then for the first time I
noticed a dark-haired girl who had alighted from the carriage and stood
holding Daisy's traveling bag and wraps.
"Her waiting maid, whom we found in Boston," Guy explained when we were
alone. "She is so young and helpless, and wanted one so badly, that I
concluded to humor her for a time, especially as I had not the most
remote idea how to pin on those wonderful fixings which she wears. It is
astonishing how many things it takes to make up the _tout ensemble_ of a
fashionable woman," Guy said, and I thought he glanced a little
curiously at my plain cambric wrapper and smooth hair.
Indeed he has taken it upon himself to criticise me somewhat! thinks I
am too slim, as he expresses it, and that my head might be improved if
it had a more snarly appearance. Daisy, of course, stands for his model,
and her hair does not look as if it had been combed in a month, and yet
Zillah spends hours over it. She--that is, Daisy--was pleased with her
boudoir, and gave vent to sundry exclamations of delight when she
entered it and skipped around like the child she is, and said she was so
glad it was blue instead of that indescribable drab, and that room is
almost the only thing she has expressed an opinion about since she has
been here. She does not talk much except to Zillah, and then in French,
which I do not understand. If I were to write just what I think I should
say that she had expected a great deal more grandeur than she finds. At
all events, she takes the things which I think very nice and even
elegant as a matter of course, and if we were to set up a style of
living equal to that of the Queen's household I do believe she would act
as if she had been accustomed to it all her life; or, at least, that it
was what she had a right to expect. I know she imagines Guy a great deal
richer than he is; and that reminds me of something which troubles me.