Mrs. Painter, who lived three doors from the Marceys, was an amiable and extraordinarily voluminous widow. She had innocent hobbies, which included a large number of tame canary birds which flew at large around her drawing-room and perched upon her shoulder, and she had a garden in which she cultivated the most fragile flowers. For the rest, she was very blonde, with eyes more innocent than Sara's, and she knew more fairy tales than any one in the world. She also had a great fancy for little girls.
It was from Mrs. Painter then that Sara returned walking as though on air, a little crown of flowers around her head and a wand in her hand. When Robert would have scoffed, he found her imperturbable. She even had the audacity to reply:
"I've just as much right to fairies and stars and things as you've got to spiders and pollywogs, Robert Marcey! Mrs. Painter says so!"
After that it was a familiar spectacle to see Sara in a flowery crown and with a fairy wand, dancing about the garden. It is true, when asked what she was doing, she replied, "Conjuring." But things did not stop there.
Underneath the comparatively peaceful domestic exterior Alice felt things brewing. There are times, as mothers know, when the domestic kettle can brew as sullenly and darkly as any witch's caldron. Alice came to the conclusion that there must be some special fire which was setting it bubbling in so sinister a fashion beyond that which Tom Marcey called the "temperamental incompatibility" of Sara and Robert. Robert was behaving in a dark and mysterious fashion, and he frequented the public library as never before. Whenever he departed for this worthy spot Sara would run to Mrs. Painter's.
