“Ach, now, Becky, ain’t it a shame you should take on so?  Ain’t it a shame before the servants?  Come, baby, in a half-hour it’s time for our drive.  Come, baby!”

Beneath the fine linen Miss Meyerburg dug with her toes into the mattress, her head burrowing deeper and the black mane of her hair rippling backward in maenadic waves.  “If you don’t let me alone, ma, if you don’t just let me lay here in peace, I’ll scream.  I’ll faint.  Faint, I tell you,” and smothered her words in the curve of her elbow.

Mrs. Meyerburg breathed outward in a sigh and sat down hesitant on the bed edge, her hand reaching out to the bare white shoulder and smoothing its high luster.

“Come, Becky, and get up like a good girl.  Don’t you want, baby, to come over by mamma’s room and see the plans for the Memorial?”

“No!  No!  No!”

“They got to be sent back to-day, Becky, before Goldfinger leaves for Boston with them.  I got to get right away busy if I want the boys should have their surprise this time next year.  To no one but my baby girl have I said yet one word.  Don’t you want, Becky, to see them before they go down by Goldfinger’s office, so he can right away go ahead?”

“No!  No!”

“Becky, ain’t you ashamed, your own papa’s Memorial?”

“Please, mamma, please.  If you only won’t Becky me.”

“Betty.”

“If you only will go and—­and leave me alone.”

“I ask you, Betty, should a girl what’s got everything that should make her happy just like an angel, a girl what has got for herself heaven on earth, make herself right away sick the first time what things don’t go smooth with her?”

“If I could only die!  If I could die!  Why don’t I die to-day?”

The throb of a sob lay on her voice, and she sat up suddenly, pushing backward with both hands the thick rush of hair to her face.  Grief had blotched her cheeks, but she was as warm and as curving as Flora.  It was as if her deep-white flesh was deep-white plush and would sink to the touch.  The line and the sheen of her radiated through her fine garment.

“Why don’t I die?” repeating her vain question, and her eyes, darker because she was so white, looking out and past her parent and streaming their bitter tears.

“You’m a bad girl, Becky, and it’s a sin you should talk so. Gott sei dank your poor papa ain’t alive to hear such bad words from his own daughter’s lips.”

“If pa was living things would be different—­let me tell you that.”

In a flare of immediate anger Mrs. Meyerburg’s head shot forward.  “Du—­” she cried; “du—­you—­you bad girl—­du—­”

“If he had lived they would!”

Suddenly Mrs. Meyerburg’s face, with the lines in it held tight, relaxed to tears and she fell to rocking herself softly to and fro, her stiff silk shushing as she swayed.

“Ach, that I should live to hear from my own child that I ’ain’t done by her like her father would want that I should do.  Every hour since I been left alone, to do by my six children like he would want has been always my only thought, and now—­”