The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 150
One evening I went home tired, soul and body. Elizabeth Ann met me as usual at the door. Simultaneously with my ringing the doorbell I could hear her voice, high-pitched in pleasurable excitement, "It's Nan, muz!" she exclaimed to mother, and came rushing to open the door to greet me. Realizing keenly my dire financial status, daring not to divulge to my mother how frantic I was, knowing she would immediately have insisted upon taking some kind of position which would make it necessary for me to again ask my sister Elizabeth to come East and get the baby, I felt particularly unable to match my daughter's playful mood. She wanted to recite a piece for me! Would I please sit down and listen?
Of course I would! I forced the gaiety I could not feel. It was all a familiar procedure, this reciting business, and I sank acquiescently into the nearest chair. Elizabeth Ann disappeared into the bedroom, and returned with a grown-up scarf around her shoulders to announce, as always, "Ladies, the princess will speak for you!" This, too, was familiar, for she had so self-styled herself very early, and somehow it seemed to me a most appropriate appellative considering the birth distinction that was hers.
"The princess will speak—which one shall I speak, muz?" she turned to inquire of my mother who was busy preparing dinner at the kitchenette, which occupied one side of the living-room. Mother whispered into her ear and Elizabeth Ann's face lighted with the joy she could not conceal in being encouraged to surprise me with her newest dramatic acquisition.
The Harding smile was directed at me, the "audience"; the Harding eyes twinkled mischievously; the Harding bow was eloquently appealing; and the voice of the Harding child fell sweetly upon the ears of her mother:
The "piece" (by A. A. Milne) went on and on, and it was all the "audience" could do to keep from rising to its feet and embracing the speaker in her adorableness. But the "audience" was too well-trained. The princess, like the princess's father before her, demanded strictest attention from an audience, and this audience knew that the princess's kisses were given only upon completion of oratorical delivery.
Never did a queen more completely rule the hearts of her subjects than did this diminutive princess her "audience," whose heart she had always possessed! Never did the father of this princess move his myriad listeners to greater tranquillity of heart! The princess restored her mother's hopefulness and strength of purpose.
That night I prayed anew that her father's people would help me to keep my darling. Would my prayer be answered?