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Tiens! she said. We have the appearance that the good God gives us.
Here she glanced at her own reflection, with complacent approval of her brown velvet eyes and black satin hair.
My poor Honor! But your hair is always beautiful, and there are no eyelashes like yours in Vevay. Take courage! In the story your hair is dark, is it not? The story marches always? When shall I hear another chapter?
Honors face brightened. The story was always a comfort when the freckles became too afflicting. It was to be a romance, in three volumes: the story of her life, beginning when she was sixteen. (She was now twelve!) It opened thus:
I was young; they called me fair. My mirror revealed masses of jet-black hair which rippled smoothly to the floor and lay in silken piles on the velvet carpet. My eyes there was one who called them starry pools of night. My cheek was a white rose.
Stephanie thought this a wonderful description. Honor, as I say, always found comfort in it, and forgot the freckles while she was following the fortunes of her dark-eyed counterpart.
To-morrow, perhaps! Now Stephanie, thou must help me in a sorrowful task. It is to put away
Thy colored dresses, chérie ? But surely! but thou wilt wear white, Honor? It is everywhere admitted as mourning, thou knowest!
Fiordispina and Angélique! Honor spoke with sorrowful dignity and resolve. Yes, Stephanie, it must be so! While my parents lived, do you see, I was a child; now An eloquent shrug and wave completed the sentence. I am resolved! she said. These dear ones, with whom my happy childhood has been passed, must retire to finally, to the shades of memory, Stephanie!
How noble! murmured Stephanie. Thou art heroic, Honor!
Shaking her head sadly, Honor opened a cupboard door, and with careful hands drew out certainly, two of the most beautiful dolls that ever were seen. Maman had chosen them with her own exquisite taste, in Paris and Rome. Angélique, the Parisian maiden, was blonde as Patricia herself, with flaxen hair and eyes of real sky-blue; Fiordispina, on the other hand, might almost stand for Honors dream-self. Her hair did not reach the ground, much less lie in silken piles on the velvet carpet, but it was long enough to braid, and it was real hair: moreover it was hair with a story to it. Maman had bought it in Rome, from a woman whose daughter had just entered a convent, and had her beautiful hair cut off. The woman wept, and assured Mrs. Bright that there was no such hair in Rome. Most of it had been purchased by two noble Princesses whom age had deprived of their own chevelure ; there was but this little tress left. She had thought to preserve it as a memento of her child, but for the puppazza of so charming a donzella as the finally she named a price, and Fiordispina
received her head of hair, in place of the bit of fuzzy lambs wool which had disfigured her pretty head.
Honor looked long and tenderly at the doll; then, dipping her hand into the pitcher of water that stood on the commode close by, she sprinkled some crystal drops on the calm bisque face.
Tiens! she said. She weeps, my Fiordispina! how lovely she is in affliction, Stephanie! If I dressed her in mourning, but deep, you understand do you think I might keep her? But no! I have resolved. The sacrifice is made!
She produced two neat box beds, and laid Fiordispina, serenely smiling through her tears, in one, while Stephanie tucked Angélique snugly in the other. They were covered with their own little satin quilts, embroidered with their names; the boxes were closed and tied with satin ribbon.
The sacrifice is made! repeated Honor. It is accomplished. Dont tell the other girls!
And she burst into tears, and wept on Stephanies shoulder.
CHAPTER II HOW HONOR FOUND HER NEW NAME: AND HOW THEY LIVED AT THE PENSION MADELEINE
What is that? asked Vivette. Bal-ti-moriole? Quest-ce que cest que ça?
Baltimore oriole! Roll your r twice, Vivi! More ori-ole!
Moro-morio bah! That does not say itself, Patricia. Moriole, that is prettier, not so?
Have it your own way! Its a bird, and Honor looks like one in her black dress, thats all. She moves like a bird too; flit is the word there, Vivi.
Fleet? Vivette repeated carefully. Is that co-rect, Patricia?
Patricia yawned; Vivette was rather tiresome with her English.
Fleet will do, she said. Shes that too. No, I cant explain: Im busy, Vivette.
Bee-sy? Like a bee, is that, Patricia? Trés occupée, nest-ce pas?
It does; and if you dont go away, Vivette, Ill show you with a hatpin what a bee does!
Tiens! murmured Vivette; none the less, Moriole is pretty, and far more facile to say than Honor!
That was how Honor came to be called Moriole among the girls; the name clung long after the black dress had been laid aside.
Two years passed; years of calm, peaceful, happy days. Two years of study in the gray classroom, with its desks and blackboards, and its estrade where Madame Madeleine or Soeur Séraphine sat benevolently watching, knitting or rosary in hand, ready to encourage or reprove, as need should arise. They were sisters, the two ladies of the Pension Madeleine, though, as the girls often said, no one would have thought it. Madame Madeleine was the elder by many years. She was more like a robin than one would have thought a person could be; round and rosy, with bright black eyes and a nose as sharp as a robins bill. She wore black always, with a little white knitted shoulder shawl; and flat shoes of black cloth which she made herself, no one knew why.