"Let's pretend, Grandy! Let's pretend I'm not Felice! Let's pretend
I'm a blanchisseuse--that's a washerlady. This is a thing that
Piqueur's mother learned in France when she was young--whenever Margot
and I spread our linen on the grass to bleach we whistle this--"

Or sometimes she would demurely assure him that she was, "--a girl
who's pulling roses to sell the man who makes perfume--" She would
snatch up her needlework basket and swing it at her hip and pull the
roses down from the mantelpiece vases and all the while she would
whistle, with her dear little chin perkily lifted and her sparkling
eyes watching to see if the Major was listening.

The song he liked best of all was the song of the hunt. I think he
liked the audacity with which she appropriated his peaked hat and
perched it jauntily on her own head and caught away his cane to use
for a riding crop. "This song," she would explain joyously, "is for
autumn, when all the men and women are waiting on their restless
horses for the master of the hunt to blow his horn--" Her cupped hands
at her lips made a beautiful horn and her whistle rang valiantly in
the great ceilinged room but the hunting song usually lost itself in a
whirr of laughter and frills as the huntress dropped breathless on the
footstool at the Major's side and put her sleek head against his knee.

"Grandy," she whispered once, "You stub-stub-stubborn man! Why don't
you learn to pretend! Why don't you make believe they're all here?"
she waved her hand toward the portraits around them! "I pretend
they're proud, proud, proud I'm here! It must have been vairee stupid
for them before I came!"