"I WANT TO PLAY"
Auntie Sue worked very hard. She now had several large orders to fill.
She was finishing Madame Villard's order to-day, and she hoped to bring
the little dresses to the apartment that evening.
Jeanne was spending Margot's birthday at the Villard apartment. So
Suzanne determined to deliver the dresses and fetch Jeanne when the day
was over.
She worked steadily and tried to banish thoughts and voices inside of
her. Since Madame Villard's visit to the shop, Suzanne had not had a
moment's peace from Conscience.
It was only the thought that Jeanne really loved to show the pretty
clothes that kept Suzanne the least bit happy.
She answered Conscience thus: "But see how happy the child is when I
give her a new frock to show! She knows, too, that she is the envy of
every child in Paris!"
And Conscience always replied, "Perhaps. But maybe she is telling you
that. Maybe she is really like any other child who wants and needs to
play!"
This was the thing that always caused Auntie Sue to shudder. If she had
thought that Jeanne cared, she could never have gone on asking her to
work. She hoped that Jeanne did not like to play and did not mind being
different from other children.
Always this hope made Auntie Sue argue with the voice. You see, Auntie
Sue tried to believe that Jeanne was glad to be a live puppet!
Two little girls played and chatted before a crackling fire. While they
sat in Margot's cheerful, rosy room, they made journeys throughout the
land of France.
Stories and stories and stories!
Once Pierrot was a soldier, and they played the Great War. Margot and
Jeanne were nurses. Through battlefields of France they took their
fancies.
Margot had motored many times with Grandmother throughout the valley of
the war. She had passed villages, gray and ruined. She had passed
villages, new and shiny, with American flags flying beside the French.
[Illustration: AMERICAN FLAGS FLYING BESIDE THE FRENCH]
She had passed American cemeteries, with thousands of little white
crosses like snow upon the ground. There were brown crosses, too, and
huge stone monuments to soldiers.
[Illustration: AMERICAN CEMETERY NEAR ROMAGNE]
There was one monument built around a line of bayonets where a company
of soldiers had been buried alive by an enemy bomb. Their bayonets
still show above the ground.
[Illustration: HUGE STONE MONUMENT TO SOLDIERS]
She had seen great tanks along the roadside--barbed wire and trenches.
[Illustration: SHE HAD SEEN GREAT TANKS ALONG THE ROADSIDE]
Through beautiful France the little girl had journeyed with
Grandmother. Through the famous wine country--the lands of Burgundy
(bûr´-gŭn-dĭ), Champagne (shăm-pān´), and Dijon
(dē-zhôn´), the city of churches, palaces, and famous mustard they
journeyed!
Along the road sat women knitting or sorting and cleaning the cotton of
their mattresses. They were washing in little outdoor water troughs
along the roadway.
[Illustration: AN OLD WOMAN CLEANING THE COTTON OF A MATTRESS]
The children made a play for every part of France. They made one for
every French character they had ever heard about. Jeanne could weave a
play about anything, and Margot could not help saying, "What a pity you
do not have more time to play!"
At this moment the doorbell rang. Auntie Sue was ushered into the hall
by the Villard maid. Auntie Sue had come to deliver her parcel and to
fetch Jeanne.
"Madame Villard is not in," said the maid, "but the children are in the
nursery. Would you like to go to them?"
Thus it happened that Auntie Sue arrived at the nursery door in time to
hear the two little girls discussing a serious question.
Auntie Sue did not want to eavesdrop. She would not have listened to the
children if she could have helped herself. But the fact of the matter
was that Auntie Sue became rooted to the floor, and she could not move.
For the first thing she heard was Jeanne's voice saying, "Oh, Margot! I
hate all those silly clothes! I hate being a model. I want to be just a
little girl."
Jeanne's voice was bitter. Is it any wonder that Auntie Sue could not
move from the spot on which she was standing? She grasped the door knob
to keep herself from falling.
[Illustration: CHAMPAGNE VINEYARDS NEAR EPERNAY]
Then the conversation went on.
"Then why do you do it?" asked Margot's voice.
"Because," came Jeanne's, "I dare not tell Auntie. She works so hard
and takes such good care of me. You see, I have no mother and father."
There was silence, and then Jeanne's voice went on, "My papa was a
soldier. But Auntie does not know where he fell."
Again silence and then Margot said, "I think your aunt would let you
play if you would ask her to."
"No," Jeanne replied, "I would not ask her. I must show the clothes. She
could not sell them if I did not show them first."
There was a short silence and then again came Jeanne's voice, "I just
want to be a little girl. I want to play!" The last word ended in a sob.
For the next few moments Auntie Sue did not hear anything. Indeed she
hardly knew anything, so stunned and shocked was she.
Auntie Sue did not know how it was that she ever opened the door. She
did not know how she ever came to leave that apartment.
It was fortunate that Madame Villard and Margot's mother were out.
Children do not always notice things the way grown people do.
But Margot wondered, after Jeanne and her aunt had left, why Auntie
Sue's eyes had been so big and frightened and why she had hardly said
good-bye.