On the top floor of the house where "The Land of Canaan" apartment made the third, lived a family whose youngest member, a girl of eleven, frequently held what Bab called "overflow meetings" with her dolls on the steps; for the family was large--as was the doll family, for that matter--and little Margery was forced to the street, the playground of city children, by lack of space.
A friendship had sprung up between her and the Wyndhams, especially Bab, born of mutual admiration for Jumeau babies with spasmodic joints, and the little girl's unspeakable worship for an older one. Tom was included in Margery's favor, both for his own and Nixie's sake; once, indeed, when the child had a sore throat, Tom cured her, and henceforth he was brevetted "my doctor," a distinction he valued. Margery was a quaint child, given to the companionship of books and people beyond her age, and with the contradicting childishness and maturity of an only child in a family of adults. She was a welcome and frequent visitor to the Wyndhams', petted and read to by Jessamy and her mother, spoiled and played with by Bab, for whom she cherished a dumb devotion not unlike Nixie's own.
As weeks went on, Margery's sharp eyes discovered the estrangement and increasing coolness between "her doctor" and her dearest Bab; and after long puzzling over it, and tentative attempts to sift the matter, she set her nimble wits to work to remedy it.
Simple methods did not appeal to the queer little girl; but at last she hit upon a plan that suited her childish love for melodrama and latent longing to be a heroine. It was a gray December day, and Margery, left alone with the servant, recognized her opportunity. Bab--alone too, with Violet, as it chanced--was startled by a violent peal of the bell. Answering the summons herself, she faced the Hortons' maid, white under her Irish freckles, who stood wringing her hands on the door-mat, and who cried at the sight of her: "Oh, Miss Wyndham dear, come up for the love of hiven! I do be alone with Margery, an' she took that bad she'll be dead agen her mother comes back."
"Dead! Margery!" gasped Bab, and flew up the stairs, outstripping honest Norah in her alarm. There was cause for alarm to the eyes of inexperienced Bab, as she looked at the little figure stretched on the bed, her face swollen out of all likeness to pretty Margery, or even to human features. A crimson face, with cheeks, eyelids, lips puffed and distorted, lay on the pillow, crimson hands as shapely as tomatoes picked the quilt, while hollow groans issued from the purpling mouth.