"I see a bear with wings," said Marigold, who felt she could see things quite as marvellous as any girl from the States trying to pass herself off as a princess.
"I see five angels sitting in that apple-tree."
"I see three little grey monkeys on a twisted bough with four moons rising behind them."
Varvara drew her black brows together in a scowl. She didn't like being outseen.
"I see the devil squatting over there in your garden, with his tail curled up over his back."
Marigold was annoyed. She felt that SHE couldn't see anything more amazing than that.
"You don't!" she cried. "That - that person never comes into OUR garden."
Varvara laughed scornfully.
"It'd be a more interesting place if he did. Do you know" - confidentially - "I pray for the devil every night."
"Pray for him! FOR him!"
"Yes. I'm so sorry for him. Because he wasn't always a devil you know. If he HAD been I suppose he wouldn't mind it so much. There must be spells when he feels awfully homesick, wishing he could be an angel again. Well, we've got all the stick-tights out. What will we do now?"
Again Marigold thought of introducing her to Sylvia. And again for some occult reason she postponed it.
"Let's go and fire potato-balls. Its great fun."
"I don't know how to fire potato-balls. What are they?"
"I'll show you - little tiny things like small green apples. You stick one on the point of a long switch - and whirl it - so - and the potato ball flies through the air for miles. I hit Lazarre in the face with one last night. My, but he was mad."
"Who is Lazarre?"
"Our French hired boy."
"How many servants have you got?"
"Just Lazarre. Salome isn't really a servant. She is related to us."
"We had fifty before The Terror," said Varvara. "And eight gardeners. Our grounds were a dream. I can just barely remember them. Uncle's are wonderful, too. But I like your little garden, and that house of currant-bushes. Isn't it fun to sit and eat currants off your own walls? Well, where are your potato-balls?"
"Over there in Mr. Donkin's field. We must go up the orchard and along by the fence and - "
"Why not cut straight across?" asked Varvara, waving her hand at Mr. Donkin's creamy green oats.
"There's no path there," said Marigold.
"We'll make a path," said Varvara - and made it. Right through the oats. Marigold followed her, though she knew she shouldn't, praying that Mr. Donkin wouldn't see them.
Varvara thought firing potato-balls the best sport ever. In her excitement she fell half-a-dozen times over potato-plants and got her dress in a fearful state in the wet clay a morning shower had left. And the potato-ball juice stained her face and hands till she looked more like a beggar-maid than a princess.
"I never was real dirty in my life before. It's nice," she said complacently.
4
Varvara insisted on helping Marigold to get supper, though Marigold would have preferred being alone. Company did not help to get supper at Cloud of Spruce. But Varvara was out to do as she liked and she did it. She helped set the table, remarking,
"That cup is just like one Aunt Clara used to have. Her husband bit a piece out of it one day when he was in a tantrum."
Marigold knew by this alone that Varvara was no princess. Princess's uncles could never do things like THAT. Why, Phidime had done that once - bit a piece right out of his wife's much prized cut-glass tumbler. The only one she had. A lady she had worked for had given it to her.
Varvara even went to the spare room with Marigold to get the fruit- cake. Marigold decided that for company she must cut some fruit- cake. Grandmother always did. And it was kept in a box under the spare room bed - the sleek, smooth terrible spare room bed where so many people had died. The fruit-cake had always been kept there, ever since Grandmother's children were small and the spare room the only place they dared not go to look for it.
"Oh!" squealed Varvara. "Is that a feather bed? A REAL feather bed?"
"Yes."
Varvara took one wild leap and landed squarely in the middle of it, bounding up and down in ecstasy right on Grandmother's famous spread of filet crochet.
"I've always wanted to see what a feather bed was like. I didn't think there were any left in the world."
Marigold was horrified. That sacred spare room bed! WHAT would Grandmother say.
"Every dead person in our family except Old Grandmother has died in that bed," she said.
Varvara turned pale and hastily slid off the bed.
"Why didn't you tell me that before I jumped on it, you little whelp?" she cried excitedly.
"I'm not a little whelp," said Marigold.
"Of course you're not." There was another wild hug and kiss. Marigold emerged from it somewhat discomposed. The Lesleys were not so emotional.
But when Varvara saw the chocolate cake in the pantry, she must have THAT for supper. She must.
"We can't," said Marigold. "Grandmother said I wasn't to touch it."
Varvara stamped her feet.
"I don't care what your grandmother said. I WILL have it. I'm keen on chocolate cake. And they never let me have more than two tiny pieces. Just put that cake right on the table. At once."
"We are not going to have that cake," said Marigold. There was no one by to see it, but at that instant she looked like a pocket- edition of Grandmother. "There is the fruitcake and the date loaf and the hop-and-go-fetch-its."
"I don't want your hop-and-go-what-do-you-call-'ems. Once and for all, are we going to have this cake?"
"Once and for all we're NOT."
Varvara clenched her hands.
"If I were my grandmother I'd order you to be knouted to death - "
"If I were MY grandmother I'd turn you over my knees and spank you," said Marigold intrepidly.
Varvara at once grew calm - deadly, stonily calm.
"If you don't let me have that chocolate cake for my supper I'll go out and climb what you call the apple-barn roof and jump down."
"You can't scare me with that," said Marigold scornfully.
Varvara turned without another word and marched out. Marigold followed her a little uneasily. Of course she was only bluffing. She wouldn't do THAT. Why, it would kill her. Even this wild creature couldn't do a thing like that.
Varvara was running nimbly up the ladder. In another second she was on the flat top of the gambrel roof.
"NOW, will you let me have the chocolate cake?" she cried.
"No," said Marigold resolutely.
Varvara jumped. Marigold screamed. She shut her eyes in anguish and opened them expecting to see Varvara dead and broken on the stones of the path below. What she saw was Varvara hanging, shrieking on the pine-tree by the apple-barn. Her dress had billowed out and caught on the stub of a lopped branch.
Marigold ran to her frantically.
"Oh, you can have the chocolate cake - you can have ANYTHING."
"How am I to get down?" moaned Varvara, whose temper and determination had evaporated between heaven and earth.
"I'll bring up the step-ladder. I think you can reach it," gasped Marigold.
Varvara managed to escape by the grace of the step-ladder, though she tore her dress woefully in the process.
"I always do just what I say I'll do," she remarked coolly.
"Just look at your dress," shivered Marigold.
"I am more important than my dress," said Varvara loftily.
Marigold was trembling in every limb as she went back to the pantry. Suppose Varvara really had fallen on those stones. Grandmother had said those girls from the States would do ANYTHING. Marigold believed it.
"Just look how beautifully I've decorated the table," said Varvara proudly.