Marigold looked. Grandmother's Killarney roses were drooping artistically in the big green basket. Oh, yes, artistically. Varvara had the knack.
"Grandmother told me I wasn't to pick any of those roses," wailed Marigold.
"Well, you didn't, did you, you darling donkey? Tell her I did it."
5
The real quarrel did not come until after supper. They had had quite a jolly supper. Varvara was so funny and interesting and said such dreadful things about the picture of Queen Victoria on the dining-room wall.
"Doesn't she look like somebody's old cook with a lace curtain on her head?"
It was really a terrible chromo, originally sent out as a "supplement" with a Montreal paper and framed in hundreds of houses all over the loyal Island. It represented the good queen with a broad blue ribbon across her breast and a crown on her head filled with diamonds, the least of which was as big as a walnut. From the crown descended the aforesaid lace curtain around the face and bust of the queen, and what wasn't lace curtain was diamonds - on ears and throat and breast and hand and arm. Marigold had always had much the same opinion as Varvara about it and had once expressed it. Only once. Grandmother had looked at her as if she had committed lese-majeste and said,
"THAT IS QUEEN VICTORIA," as if Marigold hadn't known it.
But Marigold wasn't going to have girls from the States coming in and making fun of the royal family.
"I don't think you have any business to talk like that of OUR queen," she said haughtily.
"Silly - she was Mother's aunt," retorted Varvara. "Mother remembers her well. She wasn't a bit handsome, but I'm sure she never looked like THAT. If that's where you get your ideas of a princess's dress from I don't wonder you don't think I'm one. Marigold, this chocolate cake is simply topping."
Varvara ate about half of the chocolate cake and paid it a compliment with every piece. Well, reflected Marigold complacently, certainly Cloud of Spruce cookery was good enough for anybody even if she had been the princess she pretended to be. Varvara certainly was - nice. One couldn't help liking her. Marigold decided that after the dishes were washed she would take Varvara through The Magic Door and the Green Gate and introduce her to Sylvia.
But when she went out to the garden after washing the dishes she found Varvara tormenting her toad - her own pet toad who lived under the yellow rose-bush and knew her. Marigold was certain he knew her. And here was this abominable girl poking him with a sharp stick that must hurt him terribly.
"You stop that!" she cried.
"I won't - it's fun," retorted Varvara. "I'm going to kill it - poke it to death."
Marigold darted forward and wrenched the stick out of Varvara's hand. She broke it in three pieces and confronted her self-invited guest in a true Lesleyan anger.
"You shall not hurt my toad," she said superbly. "I don't care what you threaten - not one bit. You can jump off the apple-barn or down the well or go and throw yourself into the harbour. But you shan't kill my toad, Miss PRINCESS!"
The derision that Marigold contrived to put into that "princess" is untransferable to paper. Varvara suddenly was in a most terrible temper. She was almost like an animal in her rage. She bared her teeth and dilated her eyes. Her very hair seemed to bristle.
"Pig! Louse! Flea!" she snarled. "Moon-calf! Beast!" Oh, the venom she contrived to put into her epithets. "You'd make God laugh! Cry-baby! Snivelling thing!"
Marigold WAS crying, but it was with rage. Russian princesses," real or pretended, had no monopoly of temper.
"You have the face of a monkey," Marigold cried.
"I'll - pull - your - ears - out - by - the - roots," said Varvara, with a horrible kind of deliberate devilishness.
She hurled herself against Marigold. She pulled Marigold's hair and she slapped Marigold's face. Marigold had never been so manhandled in her life. She, Marigold Lesley. She struck out blindly and found Varvara's nose. She gave it a fierce, sudden tweak. Varvara emitted a malignant yowl and tore herself loose.
"You - you - do you think you can use me like this - ME?"
"Haven't I done it?" said Marigold triumphantly.
Varvara looked around. On a garden seat lay Grandmother's shears. With a yell like a demon she pounced on them. Before Marigold could run or stir there was a sudden fierce click - another - and Marigold's two pale gold braids were dangling limply in Varvara's beautiful hand.
"Oh!" shrieked Marigold, clapping her hands to her shorn head.
Suddenly Varvara laughed. Her brief insanity had passed. She dropped the shears and the golden tresses and flung her arms around Marigold.
"Let's kiss and make up. Mustn't let a little thing like this spoil a whole day. Say you forgive me, darlingest."
"Darlingest" said it dazedly. She didn't want to - but she did. This wild girl of laughter and jest had a hundred faults and the one great virtue of charm. She would always be forgiven anything.
But Marigold, in spite of her shorn tresses, was almost glad to see Grandmother and Mother driving into the yard.
"Why? What?" began Grandmother, staring at Marigold's head.
"I did it," interposed the ragged, flushed, juice-stained Varvara resolutely. "You are not to blame her for it. It was all my doings. I did it because I was furious, but I'm glad. You'll have to let her have it trimmed decently now. And I ate the chocolate cake and picked the roses and jumped on the feather bed. She is not to be scolded at all for it. Remember that."
Grandmother made an involuntary step forward. The Princess Varvara had the narrowest escape of her royal life.
"Who are you?" demanded Grandmother.
Varvara told her as she had told Marigold. With this difference. She was believed. Grandmother knew all about the Vice-Regal visit to Prince Edward Island, and she had seen Varvara's picture in the Charlottetown Patriot.
Grandmother set her lips together. One couldn't, of course, scold a grand-niece of Queen Victoria and the daughter of a Russian Prince. One couldn't. But, oh, if one only could!
An automobile stopped at the gate. A young man and an elderly lady got out of it and came up the walk. A very fine, tall, stately lady, with diamonds winking on her fingers. Her hair snow-white, her face long, her nose long. She could never have been beautiful but she was not under any necessity of being beautiful.
"There's Aunt Clara and Lord Percy," whispered Varvara to Marigold. "I can see she's mad all over - and there's so much of her to get mad. Won't I get a roasting!"
Marigold stiffened in horror. A dreadful conviction came over her that Varvara really was the princess she had claimed to be.
And she had pulled her nose!
The wonderful, great lady walked past Varvara without even looking at her - without looking at anything, indeed. Yet one felt she saw everything and took in the whole situation even to Varvara's muddy dangling rags and dirty face.
"I am sorry," she said to Grandmother, "that my naughty little runaway niece should have given you so much trouble."
"She has not been any trouble to us," said Grandmother graciously, as one queen to another. "I am very sorry I was not at home this afternoon" - combining truth with courtesy to a remarkable degree.
The great lady turned to Varvara.
"Come, my dear," she said softly and sweetly.
Varvara disregarded her for a moment. She sprang past her and embraced Marigold tempestuously.
"If you were sugar I'd eat you up. Promise me you'll always love me - even if you never see me again. Promise - as long as grass grows and water runs. Promise."
"I will - oh, I will," gasped Marigold sincerely. It was very odd, but in spite of everything she felt that she did and would love Varvara devotedly.