FTER breakfast one morning Peleas and I were standing at the drawing-room window watching a snowstorm. It was an unassuming storm of little flakes and infrequent gusts, and hardly looked important enough to keep a baby indoors. But we who have old age and rheumatism and heaven knows what to think of, are obliged to forego our walk if so much as a sprinkling-cart passes.
This always makes Peleas cross, and I myself, that morning, was disposed to take exception, and to fail to understand, and to resort to all the ill-bred devices of well-bred people, who are too polite to be openly quarrelsome.
"What a bony horse!" remarked Peleas
"I don't think so," I said; "its ribs don't show in the least."
"It's bony," reiterated Peleas irritably. "It isn't well fed."
"Perhaps," said I, "that's its type. A good many people would say that a slender woman"
"They're bony, too," went on Peleas decidedly. "I never saw a slender woman yet who looked as if she had enough to eat."
"Peleas!" I cried, aghast at such defection, "think of the women with lovely tapering waists "
"Bean-poles," said Peleas.
"And sloping shoulders"
"Yes—pagoda-shaped shoulders," said Peleas.
"And delicate, pointed faces"
"They look hungry—every one of them—and bony," Peleas dismissed the matter—Peleas who, in saner moods, commiserates me on my appalling plumpness!
"There's the butter-woman," said I, to change the subject.
"Yes," said Peleas resentfully, finding fresh fuel in this, "Nichola uses four times too much butter in everything."
"Peleas," I rebuked him, "you know how careful she is."
"No, I don't," replied Peleas stubbornly; "she's extravagant in butter."
"She uses a great deal of oil," said I tremulously, not certain whether oil is cheaper.
"Butter, butter—she spreads butter on her soup," stormed Peleas "I believe she uses butter to boil water"
Then I laughed. Peleas is never more adorable than when he is cross—at someone else.
At that very moment the boy who was driving the butter-woman's wagon began to whistle. It was a thin, rich little tune—a tune that pours slowly, like honey. I am not musical, but I can always tell honey-tunes. At sound of it Peleas's face lighted as if at a prescription of magic.
"Ettare! Ettare!" he cried, "do you hear that tune?"
"Yes," I said breathlessly.
"Do you remember?"
"No," said I, just as breathlessly.
"It's the Varsovienne," cried Peleas, "that we danced together the night that I met you, Ettare!"
With that Peleas caught me about the waist and hummed the air with all his might and whirled me down the long room more breathless than ever.
"Peleas!" I struggled, "I don't know it. Let me go."
For it has been forty years since I have danced or thought of dancing, and I could not in the least remember the silly step.
Leaving me to regain my breath as best I might, Peleas was off up the room, around chairs and about tables, stepping long and short, turning, retreating, and singing louder and louder.
"You stood over there," he cried, still dancing, "the music had begun, and I was not your partner—but I caught you away before you could say no, and we danced—tol te tol te tol"
Peleas performed with his back to the hall door. It opened softly, and he did not hear. There stood Nichola. I have never before seen that grim old woman look astonished, but at sight of the flying figure of Peleas she seemed ready to run away. It was something to see old Nichola nonplussed. Our old servant is a brave woman, afraid of nothing on earth but an artificial bath-water heater, which she would rather die than light, but the spectacle of Peleas, dancing, seemed actually to frighten her. She stood silent for a full minute—and this in itself was amazing in Nichola, whom I have always feared to take to the theatre, lest she answer back to the player-talk.
In one of the most frantic of his revolutions, Peleas faced the door and saw her. He stopped short as if he had been a toy and someone had ceased drawing the string. He was frightfully abashed, and was therefore never more haughty.
"Nichola," said he, with lifted brows, "we did not ring."
Nichola remained motionless, her little bead eyes, which have not grown old with the rest of her, quite round in contemplation.
"We are busy, Nichola," repeated Peleas, slightly raising his voice.
Then Nichola came to and rolled her eyes naturally.
"Yah!" said she, with a dignity too fine for scorn. "Was it, then, a fire-drill?"
Really, Nichola tyrannizes over us and bullies us about in a manner not to be borne. We tell each other this every day.