My Friend the Chauffeur

reaming. "There's no good getting up," I thought, "for if I do I shall somnambulize, and maybe break my rather pleasing nose." Once, when I was a little girl, I fell downstairs

it's well to be careful. Accordingly I just lay still in tha

asleep that I felt exactly as if I were no relation to myself. Anyhow, that was the way I did feel, and I began to be a

almost sure that the things hadn't happened, because they did

han any other house I'd been in, or dreamed I'd been in since, and especially more real than th

flowers. Me at school; Mamma reading novels with one eye, and darning papa's stockings with the other. My goodness, what a different Mamma! When I thought of the difference, I was su

rtable, motherly sort of complexion, of no particular colour; or would it be pink and white like rose-leaves floating in cream? Would she have the kind of figure to fit the corsets you can pick up at any shop, ready made for fifty-nine and a half cents, and

make lots of fun of her again. I am like that; I can't help it. I suppose it's what Papa used to call his "originality," and Mamma his "cantankerousness," coming out in m

d in that magic sort of way. My "God-days," are what I call those strange days when I can sympathize with every one as if I'd known their whole history and all their troubles and thoughts and struggles, ever since they were born. I call them that, not to

ightly for a little while in the

se she was too kind hearted to say no. Anyway, it must have been horrid for her to know that he was rich enough to let her do anythin

eople," not to have pretty clothes or many servants, to look plain and speak plainly, always to tell the whole truth,

id. But Papa wouldn't let her go out much, and she didn't know any of the people she wanted to know-only quite common ones whose husbands kept stores or had other businesses which she didn't consider refined. I'm

She simply revelled in such stories; and when Papa died suddenly without time to tie up his money so as to force Mamma to go on doing w

said to me, "and when we come back we'll just

oking young women having a good time every minute of their lives, and feeling what was the use of being free to enjoy herself at last, with plenty of money, when she was dowdy and not so very young any more?

n away one morning alone on a secret errand she stammered and fidgetted a

se respect for her as my mother or think her frivolous and horrid if she put herself into the madame's hands for a few weeks. I couldn't help laughing, but Mam

ted to. Instead, I asked what would be the sense of looking twenty-five, anyhow,

t her hand in mine. Hers was as cold as ice. "Would you mind going back a little, darling?"

repeated. "Whate

nally. "Going back" was to bring on my second childhood prematurely. Thirteen was a nice age, she thought, because man

air and wear my dres

hat was what I

bear to disappoint her. But all the same, I reminded mysel

y about important things. If you ever refuse to do what I like, after I've done so much for

ittle bracelet-watch, when we were out shopping for short clothes and babyfied hats. Soon we moved away from tha

It was something like that with me, and my life was almost as good as a play. I could say and do dreadfully naughty things, which would have been outra

n her room all day, pretending to be an invalid, and drove out in a veil to the madame's. Then, when she was fin

d he took her to live in Denver. We bought lots of beautiful things in New York, and Mamma enjoyed he

fterwards, because she was delicate. But evidently the change hadn't done her much good, because she died when her baby was born. The Savant went on living, but he couldn't love his daughter properly, as she'd been the cause of her mother's death. Besides, he wasn't the kind of man to

ws had been sent to Mamma months before we left Denver, but as she and the Savant had written to each other only about once every f

ood live is perfectly lovely, the most beautiful I ever saw, with qu

the world; and though Mamma said she must be pretty, if she was anything

hich she isn't at all-now; and evidently she considered me a curiosity. But she was very sweet, an

the act of having her twentieth birthday; and it seemed that in her father's will he had "stipulated" (that's the word t

living so long in the Sisterhood his daughter might wish to join the Order, without knowing enough about the outside world to make up her mind whether it tru

safe in the fold." But Maida wasn't to inherit a penny of her father's money if she didn't obey his will, which w

ushes. She told Mamma the whole story-(a ramrod of a lady with a white face, a white dress, a

ight later we all three sailed on a huge German steamer for Cherbourg. "At least, that's what we did in the 'dream,'" I reminded myself, when I had got so far in my thoughts, lying in the monastery bed. And by that time the light was so clear in the tiny w