That evening I heard a low knock at my door.  “Come in,” I said, and Felipa entered.  I hardly knew her.  She was dressed in a flowered muslin gown which had probably belonged to her mother, and she wore her grandmother’s stockings and large baggy slippers:  on her mat of curly hair was perched a high-crowned, stiff white cap adorned with a ribbon streamer, and her lank little neck, coming out of the big gown, was decked with a chain of large sea-beans, like exaggerated lockets.  She carried a Cuban fan in her hand which was as large as a parasol, and Drollo, walking behind, fairly clanked with the chain of sea-shells which she had wound around him from head to tail.  The droll tableau and the supreme pride on Felipa’s countenance overcame me, and I laughed aloud.  A sudden cloud of rage and disappointment came over the poor child’s face:  she threw her cap on the floor and stamped on it; she tore off her necklace and writhed herself out of her big flowered gown, and running to Drollo, nearly strangled him in her fierce efforts to drag off his shell chains.  Then, a half-dressed, wild little phantom, she seized me by the skirts and dragged me toward the looking-glass.  “You are not pretty either,” she cried.  “Look at yourself! look at yourself!”

“I did not mean to laugh at you, Felipa,” I said gently:  “I would not laugh at any one; and it is true I am not pretty, as you say.  I can never be pretty, child; but if you will try to be more gentle, I could teach you how to dress yourself so that no one would laugh at you again.  I could make you a little bright-barred skirt and a scarlet bodice:  you could help, and that would teach you to sew.  But a little girl who wants all this done for her must be quiet and good.”

“I am good,” said Felipa—­“as good as everything.”

The tears still stood in her eyes, but her anger was forgotten:  she improvised a sort of dance around my room, followed by Drollo dragging his twisted chain, stepping on it with his big feet, and finally winding himself up into a knot around the chair-legs.

“Couldn’t we make Drollo something too? dear old Drollo!” said Felipa, going to him and squeezing him in an enthusiastic embrace.  I used to wonder how his poor ribs stood it:  Felipa used him as a safety-valve for her impetuous feelings.

She kissed me good-night and then asked for “the other lady.”

“Go to bed, child,” I said:  “I will give her your good-night.”

“But I want to kiss her too,” said Felipa.

She lingered at the door and would not go; she played with the latch, and made me nervous with its clicking; at last I ordered her out.  But on opening my door half an hour afterward there she was sitting on the floor outside in the darkness, she and Drollo, patiently waiting.  Annoyed, but unable to reprove her, I wrapped the child in my shawl and carried her out into the moonlight, where Christine and Edward were strolling to and fro under the pines.  “She will not go to bed, Christine, without kissing you,” I explained.