dwelt in a cage at her mother's bedroom window. She learned to whistle
without distorting her lips because her grandfather had forbidden her
to whistle and if she held her mouth almost normal he couldn't tell
when he looked out into the garden whether it was Felice or the birds
who were twittering.

Her first memories of her mother were extremely vague. She remembers
she was pretty and smiling and that most of the time she lay in a
"sleighback" bed and that in the morning she would say,

"Go out into the garden and be happy," and that at twilight she would
say, "You look as though you had been very happy in the garden--"

Sometimes Maman wasn't awake when Felicia came in from her long day in
the garden. And the little girl always knew if her mother's door were
closed that she must tiptoe softly so as not to disturb her. There was
a reward for being quiet. In the niche of the stairway Felice would
find a good-night gift--sometimes a cooky in a small basket or an
apple or a flower,--something to make a little girl smile even if her
mother was too tired or too ill to say good-night. She never clambered
past the other niches that she didn't whimsically wish there was a
Maman on every floor to leave something outside for her. So after a
time the canny child began leaving things for herself, tucked slyly
back where the housemaids wouldn't find them. She used to hide her
silver mug with water at the very top stair because she was so thirsty
from the climb.

She was always happy in Maman's room and in the garden but she had
many unhappy times in that nursery. It was at the very top of the back
of the house. From the barred windows under the carved brownstone