"Will you let him pretend with us?" the child asked Felicia gravely. And, Felicia looking at the tired face of the man in the doorway, nodded. He sat down on the edge of the larger bed and if Felicia was aware of him after that she didn't let him know it. Precious golden moments of happiness began to drip into the little room as incessantly as the silvery gray drops of the rain fell outside. "This," confided Felicia "is a story about a girl who wanted to write a letter. She was a very pretty girl, a French girl. Do you understand French? I don't very well. I didn't learn it when I was little like you--so we'll tell it in English the way Margot--who is a nice fat, comfortable woman who lives in the little house in the woods right beside my big house in the woods--tells me. I'll whistle the gay tune about the girl who is going to write the letter until you can sing it with a tra-la-la-la so--and then while you make the music we'll pretend I'm the girl who wants Peirrot to open his door so she can write the letter by the moonlight because her candle had blown out. Her fire was quite low--she was cold," the children shivered sympathetically, "first we will do the tune--so." Felicia's beautiful lips closed. Remember that you could hardly see her lips move when she whistled and remember how very beautiful her whistle was! Such a gay little tune, that old, old tune, _Au Clair de la Lune!_ The wide-eyed children watched her, humming as she motioned. The tired man on the edge of the bed watched her, humming unconsciously as the little song sang itself into his eager ears. Higher and sweeter and faster the tripping tune came. Felice was clapping her slender hands to give them the time and now the two children and their father were singing it uproariously while Felice on her hassock gestured and spoke the words. "--open your door, Peirrot--" Oh Margot! with your translation that should not offend your atheistic master by telling his granddaughter what _Dieu_ really means! The tired man, who'd known the song when he was a boy, was already laughing at Margot's version. But when Felicia came to "_Pour l'amour de Dieu_" and merrily cried out "For the love of Mike" he caught up a pillow and hugged it as he howled his unholy glee. The four of them shouted together, shouted youthfully, buoyantly, savagely, not caring in the least at what they shouted. "Oh! Oh!" exulted Felice, "how _de_-liciously happy we are--" Under the noise of their merriment the outer door had opened and closed; the tread of overshoes pattered quietly along the hall--she stood in the doorway plump and puffing, her finery bundled clumsily under her coat. She wasn't very pretty. It didn't seem as if she'd ever been young, and it seemed as though she was the angriest woman in the world. And her voice thin, soprano, nasal, rose above the joyous shouting of the merry-makers.