"May I ask whom?" the lawyer demanded in amazement. "I know where he is," she asserted childishly. "He is in Temple Bar, Brooklyn, and he would get them for me quickly, I'm sure. You see, in April we shall need these things for the planting. He told me--" she added this with delicious positiveness, "to remember to let him know if you did not manage things properly." The cart had clattered around now, Piqueur was waiting politely. The lawyer frankly gaped at her, his eyes narrowed. He looked very pale in the afternoon light. His thick hand reached out for the list. "I--I will see that you get what you wish, Miss Felicia--" he capitulated. "You do not need to ask any one else about it--I'm glad to do you the favor--" And all the way across the Pine Plains to the station he questioned Piqueur as to whether the Major or Felice had had any visitors. But Piqueur, who had always hated the lawyer, cunningly evaded the cross- examination. And in less than a week after Burrel's departure Margot drove the ox-cart across the plains and brought it back fairly laden with florists' crates and boxes. Life was not all easy. Keeping the Major happy grew more and more difficult. If Felicia found the House in the Woods joyous, he did not. He brooded restlessly save for the hours they spent together over the chess board or at dinner; sometimes he slowly paced the long gallery or the hallways, but more often he sat gloomily, his hand on his cane, his chin resting on his hand and looked sadly across the terrace where Felice directed her workers. He, like Piqueur, was growing "too old." He was really seventy-four that summer. Margot knew when his birthday came and tried to make a little feast but he ignored it. He tried to pretend a polite interest in the reconstruction of the garden but his heart was not in it. He liked better to sit indoors in his carved chair. Even on the warmest days when evening came he wanted a fire kindled on the chilly marble hearth. Felicia labored patiently at "making him happy." She had long since made him a partner in her own game that she called pretending. "Pretending" just as in the old days when she had played with Maman. Of course, she had to whistle to pretend and he still affected a scorn of the whistling he had once forbidden. The "pretending" usually took place directly after dinner. She would kiss the top of his forehead audaciously and dance before him with a deep curtsy. "Let's pretend, Grandy! Let's pretend I'm not Felice! Let's pretend I'm a blanchisseuse--that's a washerlady. This is a thing that Piqueur's mother learned in France when she was young--whenever Margot and I spread our linen on the grass to bleach we whistle this--"