"Miggy! Oh, Miggery!" said Peter, softly. He had made this name for a sort of superlative of her.
"Like me?" inquired Miggy. I wonder if even the female atom does not coquette when the sun strikes her to shining in the presence of her atom lord?
You know that low, emphatic, unspellable thing which may be said by the throat when a thing is liked very much? When one makes it, it feels like a vocal dash in vocal italics. Peter did that, very softly.
"Well," said Miggy, "I feel that dressed-up that I might be cut out of paper. What _are_ you doing down there, Peter?"
He glanced down mutely, and Miggy went round the table and saw what he held.
"Why," she said, "that great heavy girl, Peter. Give her to me."
Miggy bent over Peter, with her arms outstretched for the child. And Peter looked up at her and enjoyed the moment.
"She's too heavy for you to lift," he said, with his occasional quiet authority. "I'll put her where you want her."
"Well, it's so hot upstairs," Miggy hesitated. "It's past her bedtime, but I hate to take her up there."
"Undress her down here," said I. "The Delft sugar bowl shuts you off a fine dressing-room. And let her sleep for a while on the couch."
So Miggy went for the little nightgown, and Peter, with infinite pains, got to his feet, and detached Bless-your-Heart and deposited her on the table, where she yawned and humped her back and lay down on an unfinished sleeve and went to sleep again. And when Miggy came down, she threw a light quilt and a pillow near the couch and sat behind the table and held out her arms.
"Now!" she said to Peter, and to me she said, "I thought maybe you'd spread her up a bed there on the couch."
"Let Peter," said I. "I've another letter I ought to have written. If I may, I'll write that here while you undress her."
"Well," said Miggy, "there's some sheets of letter-paper under the cover of the big Bible. And the ink--I guess there's some in the bottle--is on top of the organ. And the pen is there behind the clock. And you'd ought to find a clean envelope in that pile of newspapers. I think I saw one there the other day. You spread up her bed then, Peter."
I wrote my letter, and Peter went at the making up of the lounge, and Miggy sat behind the table to undress Little Child. And Little Child began waking up. It touched me infinitely that she who in matters of fairies and visionings is so wise and old should now, in her sleepyhood, be just a baby again.