little stranger girl for coming in, sitting down, and playing with her kitten?
"Maybe if I don't move or make any noise she'll go away and won't see me," the child thought.
To her no grown-up person could be really young, but for a grown-up this woman looked youngish, about as young as mother. Mother had been twenty-eight on her last birthday, and looked almost like a little girl before she was dressed in the morning, with clouds of dark hair falling around her small, white face and shading her big, blue eyes.
This woman had dark hair, too, but Angel could not see what color her eyes were. She was looking down. Her eyelashes were long and black, like mother's, yet she was not like mother in any other way. Mother's face was rather round, and nearly always smiling and happy. This woman's face, though pretty – yes, Angel thought it pretty, and, like a picture of the Madonna Mademoiselle had – was very grave and sad. That was strange, in this beautiful garden full of flowers and sunshine; like a wrong note in music, if Angel mischievously struck a key while mother was playing something gay and sweet. Besides, the woman had on a dress that wasn't pretty at all, or like the dresses mother wore. It was brown, and plain, without any trimming, almost like a servant's dress. Angel wished she would go away, but she didn't; she stooped down and began to do two very queer things. Both were queer for a woman to do, and one was dreadful.
The first thing – the thing that was only queer – was to cover up a bed of very delicate flowers, whose name Angel had never heard, with gray stuff such as kitchen towels are made of, only much thicker and rougher. The woman had been carrying a large bundle of this in her arms, and in covering the bed she supported the gray stuff on sticks higher than the flowers.
The other queer thing she did, which was dreadful as well as queer, was to cry. It seemed awful to Angel that a grown-up woman should cry – cry in a beautiful garden, where she thought she was alone. And on Christmas Eve! Angel felt quite sick. Her throat filled as if she, too, were going to cry. It was all she could do not to give the kitten a nervous squeeze. She was seized with a wild wish to rush out and try to comfort the woman; but instinct even more than childish shyness held her back. Angel knew that, if she had stolen away to cry where she hoped not to be seen, she would hate to have a strange person jump out and surprise her. Probably she would hate it even more if she were a grown-up.
The child hidden under the palm-tree and the woman outside were so near to each other that the child could hear the woman give choking sobs which it seemed as if she tried to swallow. Perhaps she didn't try hard enough at first, for the sobs, instead of stopping, came faster and harder, and Angel's large, horrified eyes saw tears run down the woman's face and splash on to the flowers. Suddenly, however, the gasping ceased. The woman let fall an end of the bagging not yet draped over the sticks, and sprang to her feet with the quick grace of a frightened fawn. Not that Angel definitely thought of any such simile, but away in the back of her mind dimly materialized the picture of a deer she had once seen rise up among the tall grasses in a public park.
The young woman fumbled in the pocket of her shabby brown dress and found a handkerchief. She hurriedly dabbed her eyes, and rubbed her cheeks hard, as if to make them so red that the redness of her eyelids might not be noticed.
"She must have heard some noise," thought Angel; and as the thought formed she, too, heard what the woman had heard – the pat-pat of footsteps coming lightly and quickly across grass. Then from under the green-and-gold mimosas a man appeared – a tall, youngish man, very thin and pale, carrying a thing which seemed a mysterious object for a man to carry in his arms; but then, everything about this fairy garden was mysterious and puzzling.
Heavily leaning against the man's shoulder and hanging down over his back was a pine-tree, small for a pine-tree, but large for a person to carry. He came on with his head bent, and at first did not see the woman, so – apparently – he was not in search of her. But he limped as he walked, and the woman cried out sharply:
"Oh, Paul, you've hurt yourself! You've had a fall!"
He looked up, surprised. "Why, dear one, I didn't know you were here," he said. "I did slip on a stone coming down the mountain. But it's nothing. I've wrenched my ankle a little, that's all."
"And you had that long, hard walk afterward!" the woman exclaimed. "My poor Paul! You out of bed only three days ago. It's too cruel. Everything goes against us."
"Everything?" He caught her up and a look of alarm or anxiety chased away the smile he had put on to reassure her. "Has bad news come, then? But yes – you needn't answer. I know it has. I wish I hadn't said you might open the avocat's letter! You've been crying, Suze."
The woman spoke English as if it were her own language, but the man had an accent which showed that he was not born to it. Even Angel – listening half against her will – noticed that, almost unconsciously. But she had been forced to think a great deal about "accent" in the last few months since she had come to live in Paris and talk with a French governess. She had picked up French quickly, as children do, but was always having the word "accent, accent!" drummed into her head.
"I couldn't help crying a little," said Suze. "I didn't mean to let you know. I thought you'd be longer away."
"You mustn't try to hide your feelings from me, dear," the man said. "Troubles will be lighter if you let me bear them with you."
"But you – you're always trying to cheer me up, no matter what's happened," the woman reminded him, almost reproachfully. Angel realized that they must be husband and wife. They were about the right age for each other, she thought; and even a child could see by the look in their eyes that they loved one another dearly. "You pretend now that you're not hurt, but you are; you're suffering – your face shows it. Ah! the dear face, so white, so patient! I hoped I should have good news for you when you came back. I hoped that in spite of everything we might have a little peace, a little happiness, just enough to last us over Christmas, if no more. But what's the use of our hoping? Always comes another blow!" Her sobs broke out again. Tears poured over her cheeks.
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