HE two little girls, Daisy Mears and Elsie Threamer, were nine years old, and they lived next door to each other; but there the coincidence came to an end; and even if any further similarity between them had been perceptible, it could not have been mentioned openly without causing excitement in Elsie's family. Elsie belonged to that small class of exquisite children once seen on canvas in the days when a painter would exhibit without shame a picture called “Ideal Head;” she was one of those rare little fair creatures at whom grown people, murmuring tenderly, turn to stare. Elsie's childhood was attended, in fact, by the murmurs and exclamations not only of strangers but of people who knew her well. “Greuze!” they said, or “A child Saint Cecilia!” or “That angelic sweetness!” But whatever form preliminary admiration might take, the concluding tribute was almost always the same: “And so unconscious, with it all!” When some unobservant and rambling-minded person did wander from the subject without mentioning Elsie's unconsciousness, she was apt to take a dislike to him.
People often wondered what that ineffable child with the shadowy downcast eyes was thinking about. They would “give anything,” they declared, to know what she was thinking about. But nobody wondered what Daisy Mears was thinking about—on the contrary, people were frequently only too sure they knew what Daisy was thinking about.
From the days of her earliest infancy, Elsie, without making any effort, was a child continually noticed and acclaimed; whereas her next neighbor was but an inconspicuous bit of background, which may have been more trying for Daisy than anyone realized. No doubt it also helped great aspirations to sprout within her, and was thus the very cause of the abrupt change in her character during their mutual tenth summer. For it was at this time that Daisy all at once began to be more talked about than Elsie had ever been. All over the neighborhood and even beyond its borders, she was spoken of probably dozens of times as often as Elsie was—and with more feeling, more emphasis, more gesticulation, than Elsie had ever evoked.
Daisy had accidentally made the discovery that the means of becoming prominent are at hand for anybody, and that the process of using them is the simplest in the world; for of course all that a person desirous of prominence needs to do is to follow his unconventional impulses. In this easy way prodigious events can be produced at the cost of the most insignificant exertion, as is well known by people who have felt a temptation to step from the roof of a high building, or to speak out inappropriately in church. Daisy still behaved rather properly in church, but several times she made herself prominent in Sunday school; and she stepped off the roof of her father's garage, merely to become more prominent among a small circle of colored people who stood in the alley begging her not to do it.
She spent the rest of that day in bed—for after all, while fame may so easily be obtained, it has its price, and the bill is inevitably sent in—but she was herself again the next morning, and at about ten o'clock announced to her mother that she had decided to “go shopping.”
Mrs. Mears laughed, and just to hear what Daisy would say, asked quizzically: “'Go shopping?' What in the world do you mean, Daisy?”
“Well, I think it would be a nice thing for me to do, Mamma,” Daisy explained. “You an' Grandma and Aunt Clara, you always keep sayin', 'I b'lieve I'll go shopping.' I want to, too.”
“What would you do?”
“Why, I'd go shopping the way you do. I'd walk in a store an' say: 'Have you got any unbleached muslin? Oh, I thought thisd be only six cents a yard! Haven't you got anything nicer?' Everything like that. I know, Mamma. I know any 'mount o things to say when I go shopping. Can't I go shopping, Mamma?”
“Yes, of course” her mother said, smiling. “You can pretend our big walnut tree is a department-store and shop all you want.”
“Well—” Daisy began, and then realizing that the recommendation of the walnut tree was only a suggestion, and not a command, she said, “Well, thank you, Mamma,” and ran outdoors, swinging her brown straw hat by its elastic cord. The interview had taken place in the front hall, and Mrs. Mears watched the lively little figure for a moment as it was silhouetted against the ardent sunshine at the open doors; then she turned away, smiling, and for the rest of the morning her serene thought of Daisy was the picture of a ladylike child playing quietly near the walnut tree in the front yard