With instant sobriety the Little Girl stopped rocking, and stared perplexedly into the White Linen Nurse’s shocked eyes.  Her own little face was all wrinkled up with earnestness.

“But the Parpa—­didn’t like the Marma!” she explained painstakingly.  “The Parpa—­never liked the Marma!  That’s why he doesn’t like me!  I heard Cook telling the Ice Man once when I wasn’t more than ten minutes old!”

Desperately with one straining hand the White Linen Nurse stretched her fingers across the Little Girl’s babbling mouth.  Equally desperately, with the other hand, she sought to divert the Little Girl’s mind by pushing the fur cap back from her frizzly red hair, and loosening her sumptuous coat, and jerking down vainly across two painfully obtrusive white ruffles, the awkwardly short, hideously bright little purple dress.

“I think your cap is too hot,” she began casually, and then proceeded with increasing vivacity and conviction to the objects that worried her most.  “And those—­those ruffles,” she protested, “they don’t look a bit nice being so long!” Resentfully she rubbed an edge of the purple dress between her fingers.  “And a little girl like you,—­with such bright red hair,—­oughtn’t to wear—­purple!” she admonished with real concern.

“Now whites and blues—­and little soft pussy-cat grays—­”

Mumblingly through her finger-muzzled mouth the Little Girl burst into explanations again.

“Oh, but when I wear gray,” she persisted, “the Parpa—­never sees me!  But when I wear purple he cares,—­he cares—­most awfully!” she boasted with a bitter sort of triumph.  “Why when I wear purple and frizz my hair hard enough,—­no matter who’s there, or anything,—­he’ll stop right off short in the middle of whatever he’s doing—­and rear right up so perfectly beautiful and mad and glorious—­and holler right out ’For Heaven’s sake, take that colored Sunday supplement away!’”

“Your Father’s nervous,” suggested the White Linen Nurse.

Almost tenderly the Little Girl reached up and drew the White Linen Nurse’s ear close down to her own snuggling lips.

“Damned nervous!” she confided laconically.

Quite against all intention the White Linen Nurse giggled.  Floundering to recover her dignity she plunged into a new error.  “Poor little dev—­,” she began.

“Yes,” sighed the Little Girl complacently.  “That’s just what the Parpa calls me.”  Fervidly she clasped her little hands together.  “Yes, if I can only make him mad enough daytimes,” she asserted, “then at night when he thinks I’m all asleep he comes and stands by my cribby-house like a great black shadow-bear and shakes and shakes his most beautiful head and says, ‘Poor little devil—­poor little devil.’  Oh, if I can only make him mad enough daytimes!” she cried out ecstatically.

“Why, you naughty little thing!” scolded the White Linen Nurse with an unmistakable catch in her voice.  “Why, you—­naughty—­naughty—­little thing!”