"Oh, bring them up quick, Wilkins, and tell papa to be sure and come up directly after breakfast."
"Yes, for sho', Miss Hazel," said Wilkins, delighted to have a word with the little daughter of her whom he had carried in his arms thirty-two years ago up and down the jasmine-covered porch of an old New Orleans mansion.
In a few minutes, he reappeared with two large silver trays, on one of which was the tempting breakfast of Hamburg grapes, a dropped egg, a slice of golden-brown toast, half of a squab broiled to the melting-point, and a cup of cocoa. On the other were boxes large and small, and white envelopes of all sizes.
Gabrielle cut the string and opened the boxes, while Hazel looked on, pleased to be remembered, but finding nothing unusual in the display; for Christmas and Easter and birthdays and parties brought just about the same collection, minus "the hearts," which Wilkins had felt through the covers. The only fun, after all, was in the guessing.
Just then Mr. Clyde entered.
"Oh, papa! I 'm so glad you have come; it's no fun guessing alone."
She put up her peaked, sallow little face for the good-morning kiss; and her father, with the thought of his last night's struggle, took the face in both hands and kissed brow and mouth with unusual tenderness.
"Why, papa!" she exclaimed, "that kiss is my best valentine; you never kissed me that way before."
"Well, it's time I began, Birdie; let's see what you have for nonsense here. What's this--from Cambridge?"
"Oh, that's Jack, I 'm sure; he always sends me violets; but what is that in the middle of the bunch?" With a smile she drew out a tiny vignette of her Harvard Sophomore cousin. It was framed in a little gold heart, and on a slip of paper was written, "For thee, I 'm all 'art."
"Jack 's a gay deceiver," laughed her father; "he 's all ''art' for a good many girls, big and little. What's this?--and this?"
One after another he took out the contents of envelopes and boxes,--candy hearts by the pound in silver bonbon boxes, silk hearts, paper hearts, a flower heart of real roses ("That's from you, Papa Clyde!" she exclaimed, and her father did not deny the pleasant accusation), hollow gilt hearts stuffed with sentiments, a silver chatelaine heart for change, and last, but not least, an enormous envelope, a foot square, containing a white paper heart all written over with "sentiments" from the girls in her class at school.
"Come now, Birdie," said her father, after the last one had been opened and guessed over, "eat your breakfast, or nurse will scold us both for putting play before business."
"I don't think I want any, papa," said Hazel, languidly, for, after all, the valentines had proved to be almost too much excitement for the little girl, who was just recovering from weeks of slow fever; "and, Gabrielle, take the flowers away, they make my head ache,--and the other things, too," she added, turning her head wearily on the pillow.
"But you must eat, Hazel dear," said her father, gently but firmly; and therewith he took a grape and squeezed the pulp between her lips. Hazel laughed,--a faint sound.
"Why, papa, if you feed me that way, I shall be a real Birdie. Yes,"
she nodded, "that's good; I 'll take another;" and her father proceeded to feed her slowly, now coaxing, now urging, then commanding, till a few grapes and a half egg were disposed of.
"There, now, I won't play tyrant any longer," he said, "for your real tyrant of a doctor is coming soon, and I must be out of the way."
"Are you going to be at home for luncheon to-day, papa?"
"No, dear, I 've promised to go out to Tuxedo with the Masons, but I shall be at home before dinner, just to look in upon you. I dine with the Pearsells afterwards. Good-bye." A kiss,--two, three of them; and the merry, handsome young father, still but thirty-seven, had gone, and with him much of the brightness of Hazel's day.
But she was used to this. Ever since she could remember anything, she had been petted and kissed and--left with her nurse, her governess, or a French maid.
Her young mother, a Southern belle, lived more out of her home than in it, with the round of gayeties in the winter months interrupted and continued by winter house-parties at Lenox, a yachting cruise in the Mediterranean, an early spring-flitting to the mountains of North Carolina, and the later household moving to Newport.
In all these migrations Hazel accompanied her parents; in fact, was moved about as so much goods and chattels, from New York to the Berkshires, from the Berkshires to Malta, from Malta to the Great Smokies, from the mountains to the sea; her appurtenances, the governess and French maid, went with her; and the routine of her home in New York, the study, the promenade, the all-alone breakfasts and dinners went on with the regularity of clockwork, whether on the yacht, in the mountains, or in the villa on the Cliff.
So now, although she wished her father would stay and entertain her, it never occurred to her to tell him so; and likewise it never occurred to the father that his child needed or wished him to stay. Nor had it ever occurred to the young mother that she was not doing her whole duty by her child; for she never omitted to go upstairs and kiss her little daughter good-night, whether the child was awake or asleep, before going out to dinner, theatre, or reception.
She died when Hazel was nine, and it was a lovely memory of "mamma" that Hazel cherished: a vision of loveliness in trailing white silk, or velvet, or lace,--her mother always wore white, it was her Southern inheritance,--with a single dark-red rose among the folds of Venetian point of the bertha; always a gleam of white neck and arms banded with flashing, many-faceted diamonds, or roped with pearls; always a sense of delicious white warmth and fragrance, as the vision bent over her and pressed a light kiss upon her cheek. And if, in her bliss, she opened her sleepy eyes, she looked always into laughing brown depths, and putting up her hand caressed shining masses of brown hair.
But it was always a good-night vision. In the morning mamma did not breakfast until ten, and Hazel was off to the little private school at half-past nine. At noon mamma was either out at lunch or giving a lunch-party; and in the afternoon there was the promenade in the Park with the governess, and sometimes, as a treat, a drive with mamma on her round of calls, when Hazel and the maid sat among the furs in the carriage. Then Hazel played at being grown up, and longed for the time when she could wear a reception dress like mamma's, of white broadcloth and sable, and trip up the steps of the various houses, and trip down again with a bevy of young girls laughing and chatting so merrily.
All that had ceased when Hazel was nine, and the young father had made her mistress in her mother's place. It was such a great house! and there were so many servants! and the housekeeper was so strict! and it was so queer to sit at the round table in the big dining-room and try to look at papa over the silver epergne in the centre!
When she was eleven, she entered one of the large private schools which many of her little mates attended. Soon it came to be the "girls of our set" with Hazel; and then there followed music-lessons, and violin-lessons, and riding-lessons, and dancing-class, and riding-days in the Park, and lunch-parties with the girls, and theatre-matinee-parties, and concerts at Carnegie Hall, and birthday parties, and sales--school and drawing-room affairs--and Lenten sewing-classes; until gradually her little society life had become an epitome of her mother's, and when she began to shoot up like a bean-sprout, lose her round face and the delicate pink from her cheeks, uncles and aunt and cousin and friends whispered of her mother's frail constitution, and that it was time to take heed.
Then it was that the physician, who had helped to bring her into the world, was summoned hastily to prevent her early departure from it.
This was the "curious case" that so bothered him; and this pale, languid girl of thirteen in the blue-canopied bed was the one he intended to transplant into another soil.
A short, sharp tap announced his arrival. The nurse opened the door.
"Good-morning, little girl--ah, ah! Saint Valentine's Day? I had forgotten it; all those came this morning?" he said cheerily, pointing to a table on which Gabrielle had placed all the remembrances but the flowers.
"Yes, Doctor Heath; but my best valentine, you know, is papa, and after him, you."
"Hm, flatterer!" growled the Doctor, feeling her pulse. "Pretty good, pretty good. Think we can get you up for half a day. What do you say, nurse?"
"I think it will do her good, Doctor Heath; she has no appetite yet, and a little exercise might help her to it."
"No appetite?" The two eyebrows drew together in a straight line over the bridge of his nose, and, from under them, a pair of keen eyes looked at Hazel.
"Well, I 've planned something that will give you a splendid one, Hazel,--the best kind of a tonic--
"Oh, I don't want to take any more tonics. I am so sick of them," said Hazel, in a despairing tone, for although she adored the Doctor, she despised his medicines.
"You won't get sick of this tonic so soon, I 'll warrant," he said, unbending his brows and letting the full twinkle of his fine eyes shine forth,--"at least not after you are used to it. I won't say but that it may cause a certain kind of sickness at first; in fact, I 'm sure of it."
"Oh, will it nauseate me?" cried Hazel, dreading to suffer any more.
"No, no, it won't do that, but--"
"But what _do_ you mean, Doctor Heath? Are you joking?"
"Never was more in earnest in my life," replied the Doctor, rubbing his hands in glee, much to Hazel's amazement. "Hazel," he turned abruptly to her, "papa is a splendid fellow; did you know that?"
Hazel laughed aloud, a real girl's laugh,--Doctor Heath was so queer at times.
"Have you just found that out?" she retorted.
"No, you witch,--don't be impertinent to your elders,--I have n't; but really he is, take it all in all, just about the most common-sense fellow in New York City."
"What has he done now, that you are praising him so?"
"Just heard to me, my dear, and agreed to do just as I want him to,"
said the Doctor, demurely.
"Why," laughed Hazel, "that's just when I think he is a most splendid fellow, when he does just what I want him to. Is n't it funny you and I think just alike!" And she gave his hand a malicious little pat. The Doctor caught the five slender digits and held them fast.
"Now we 're agreed that you have the most splendid, common-sense father in the world, I want you to prove to me that your father has the most splendid, common-sense daughter in it, as well."
Again Hazel laughed. She was used to her friend's ways.