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diff --git a/old/65869-0.txt b/old/65869-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 0bd7474..0000000 --- a/old/65869-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7552 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Hollyhock House, by Marion Ames -Taggart - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Hollyhock House - A Story for Girls - -Author: Marion Ames Taggart - -Illustrator: Frances Rogers - -Release Date: July 18, 2021 [eBook #65869] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Beth Baran, Sue Clark and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOLLYHOCK HOUSE *** - - - - - -HOLLYHOCK HOUSE - - - - -OTHER BOOKS FOR GIRLS BY - -MARION AMES TAGGART - -_Issued by Doubleday, Page & Company_ - - THE LITTLE GREY HOUSE - THE DAUGHTERS OF THE LITTLE GREY HOUSE - -_Issued by Other Publishers_ - - THE WYNDHAM GIRLS - MISS LOCHINVAR - MISS LOCHINVAR’S RETURN - NUT-BROWN JOAN - DADDY’S DAUGHTERS - PUSSY CAT TOWN - THE NANCY BOOKS (Five volumes) - SIX GIRL SERIES (Seven volumes) - LOYAL BLUE AND ROYAL SCARLET - HER DAUGHTER JEAN - BETH’S WONDER WINTER - BETH’S OLD HOME - - - - -[Illustration: “‘NOT SUCH TALL, TALL GIRLS MY DAUGHTERS!’”] - - - - -HOLLYHOCK HOUSE - -_A Story for Girls_ - - BY - MARION AMES TAGGART - - [Illustration] - - ILLUSTRATED BY - FRANCES ROGERS - - GARDEN CITY NEW YORK - DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY - 1916 - - - - - _Copyright, 1916, by_ - DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY - - _All rights reserved, including that of - translation into foreign languages, - including the Scandinavian_ - - - - - _Dedicated - with love to - Florence Ames_ - - - - -CONTENTS - -CHAPTER PAGE - - I. “THE ROSEBUD GARDEN OF GIRLS” 3 - - II. “WHO LOVES A GARDEN LOVES A GREENHOUSE, TOO” 20 - - III. “A ROSEBUD SET WITH LITTLE WILFUL THORNS” 37 - - IV. “HOME AT EVENING’S CLOSE TO SWEET REPAST - AND CALM REPOSE” 57 - - V. “SWEET AS ENGLISH AIR COULD MAKE HER” 75 - - VI. “SOMETHING BETWEEN A HINDRANCE AND A HELP” 95 - - VII. “’TIS JUST LIKE A SUMMER BIRD CAGE IN - A GARDEN” 111 - - VIII. “AND ADD TO THESE RETIRED LEISURE, THAT IN - TRIM GARDENS TAKES HIS PLEASURE” 129 - - IX. “WHOSE YESTERDAYS LOOK BACKWARD WITH A SMILE” 146 - - X. “’TIS BEAUTY CALLS AND GLORY SHOWS THE WAY” 165 - - XI. “HE NOTHING COMMON DID OR MEAN” 183 - - XII. “AND LEARN THE LUXURY OF DOING GOOD” 199 - - XIII. “WISE TO RESOLVE AND PATIENT TO PERFORM” 215 - - XIV. “OUR ACTS OUR ANGELS ARE, OR GOOD OR ILL” 233 - - XV. “FRAGRANT THE FERTILE EARTH AFTER SOFT SHOWERS” 250 - - XVI. “IMPLORES THE PASSING TRIBUTE OF A SIGH” 267 - - XVII. “RICH WITH THE SPOILS OF NATURE” 285 - - XVIII. “AND FEEL THAT I AM HAPPIER THAN I KNOW” 302 - - - - -LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS - - “‘Not such tall, tall girls, my daughters!’” _Frontispiece_ - - FACING PAGE - “‘What time do you think the perfesh, which stop - here, rises?’” 44 - - “‘Mary, this is Wilfrid Willoughby who drives - splendidly, and is going to look after us this - summer.’” 174 - - “Those who knew her best were amazed and a little - startled” 240 - - - - -HOLLYHOCK HOUSE - -CHAPTER ONE - -“THE ROSEBUD GARDEN OF GIRLS” - - -Mary, Jane, and Florimel--these were the three Garden girls. Mary, -Jane said, “looked it.” She was seventeen, broad and low of brow, with -brown hair softly shading it, brown eyes, as warm and trusty as a -dog’s, looking straight out upon a friendly world from under straight -brows and long brown lashes; a mouth that might have been too large if -it had not been so sweet that there could not be too much of its full -rosy flexibility. She had white, strong teeth and a clean-cut, reliable -sort of nose, a boyish squareness of chin, and clear wholesome tints of -white, underlaid with red, in her skin. She was somewhat above medium -height and moved with a fine healthy rhythm, like one thinking of her -destination and not of how she looked getting to it. Last of all, she -had wonderfully beautiful hands, not small, but perfectly modelled, -capable, kind, healing hands which, young as they were, had the -motherly look that cannot be described, yet is easily recognizable, -the kind of hand that looks as if it were made expressly to support and -pat baby shoulders. - -Jane was quite right: Mary Garden did “look like a Mary.” - -Jane herself, at fifteen, did not in the least suggest her name. She -was small, slender, if one were polite, “thin” if not. She had red hair -of the most glorious, burnished, brilliant red, masses of it, and it -was not coarse, like much of the red hair, but fine and uncontrollable. -It glowed and rose and flew above and around Jane’s startlingly white -face till it might have been the fire around the head of an awakened -Brünhilde. No one could have said positively what colour her eyes -were. They possessed life rather than tint. They flashed and dreamed, -laughed and gloomed under their arching brows of red gold, through -their red-gold lashes, with much of the colour of her hair in them. -Her face was long, with a pointed chin and a delicate little nose; its -thin nostrils quick to quiver with her quickened breath. Her upper lip -was so short that her small, even teeth always showed; her mouth was -sensitive, not to say melancholy. Her neck was long and slender and -swan-white. Her shoulders sloped; she was not more than five feet -tall; her hands were long and thin, quick and fluttering, like her -lips. Altogether Jane was exactly the opposite of her prim, old-time -name. - -These two Garden girls had received Garden names from their father and -his family. He had been Doctor Elias Garden, doctor of letters and -physics, not of medicine; a grave man, devoted to study, old of his -age, and that age twelve years more than his wife’s, to whom he had -left his three little girls, when Mary was four years old, by dying -untimely. - -The third child this girl-wife had named. The mother was but -twenty-four, and she was understood to have been fond of sentiment and -the ornamental; she named her baby Florimel, out of Spenser’s “Fairy -Queen.” This proved to be a misfit name even more than Jane’s. Florimel -was a dark little witch, black-haired, black-eyed, white of skin, with -red cheeks and red lips, a tomboy when she was small, an absolute -genius at mischief as she grew older, devoid of the least love of the -sentimental. She whistled like the blackbird Mary called her, climbed -trees, fell out of them, tore dresses, bruised flesh, got into scrapes, -but also out of them, through her impetuosity. She was a firebrand in -temper, yet easily moved to pity, exceedingly loyal and loving to -those she loved, seeing no virtues in those she disliked. Thus she had -stormed her way up to her thirteen years, a problem to manage, except -that she adored Mary so much that she could not long grieve her, and -was so true and affectionate that she was sure to come out right in the -end. - -Young as they were, the Garden girls were three distinct types, each -beautiful. Mary least could claim actual beauty, perhaps, yet she was -the loveliest of the three. Jane and Florimel were creatures for an -artist to rave over; Mary was the type that men and women and angels -love. When Florimel was a year old their mother had left them. She -was English, an artist of some sort, they knew, and she had elected -to respond to the call of her art, and had gone to England, leaving -her children to the more than efficient guardianship of the Garden -relatives, their legally appointed guardian, Mr. Austin Moulton, their -father’s friend, and the devotion of Anne Kennington, the housekeeper, -nurse--everything. It would have been hard to define Anne Kennington’s -position in the Garden household, as it would have been hard to do -justice to the way she filled it. - -The girls had never thought much about their mother. The Gardens had -been too well-bred to decry her to her children, but they had gathered -the impression that she “did not amount to much,” a fearful indictment -from a Garden! Mary had silently felt, in a hurt way, that _she_ -could never have left three little girls, no matter to whom, and she -had not talked about their mother, even to her sisters. As time went -on, without being told so, the Garden girls came to imagine that their -mother was dead. This impression of one whom only Mary remembered -vaguely could not sadden them. They were motherless; but, though they -envied girls with loving fathers and mothers, they had a great deal. -Each in her way, the three Garden girls were philosophers and did not -imagine they were unhappy when they were not, since no life holds every -form of good. - -They had the solid, fine old house; Win Garden, Winchester, their -father’s half-brother, only twenty-four years old, so big-brotherly -that it was silly to call him uncle, and they never did; and the -Garden. The square house of pressed brick stood in a garden, a great, -old-fashioned garden, blooming around it, as the house bloomed amid it, -with its rosebud girls. Sometimes the Garden girls thought the garden -was their chief earthly good; certainly it was their chief joy. With it -and one another little else was needed for companionship. - -Now, in May, the lilacs blossomed and the irises were beginning, the -herald shrubs were announcing themselves vanguards of the flower-beds. -Many of these were filled with perennials, growing taller, more -luxuriant each year, thanks to the care they got, chief of them all the -tall hollyhocks which illumined the garden on all sides. The hollyhocks -were so many and so magnificent that they gave their name to the Garden -house. It was known as Hollyhock House to all the countryside. Other -beds were left for seeds of swift-growing annuals; each Garden girl had -two of these beds for her own planting and, when they flowered, one -could have accurately named their owners. Even meteoric Florimel did -not neglect her flowers. - -Jane was singing in the sunshine as she cut sprays of white lilac. -She looked like a sunray clad in flesh, with the sunshine on her -magnificent hair, and her slender body pulsating with song, as a ray of -light quivers in the air. - -Mary looked up from her aster seedlings which she was thinning. - -“You look as though you were going to fly away, Janie Goldilocks!” -she cried, dropping back on her heels to regard Jane. Mary was always -discovering her sister anew. - -“Wish I could!” cried Jane. “Fly right up like a spark--my hair is red -enough! And be a spark that wouldn’t cool in the air, but keep on and -on! Over the Himalayas!” she added as an afterthought; that sounded -magnificently distant, big and vague. - -“Over the home layers would do for me--the chicken house!” laughed Mary. - -“My voice goes up and up; it’s part of me, yet, when it is up, it is no -longer a part of me,” said Jane. “I’m here, my feet on the ground, and -I can send my voice skyward, and it is mine, me, and not me. It goes -very, very high----” - -“I noticed it,” said Mary. Indeed Janie’s singing had mounted to the -treetops, an arrow of sound, sharp, clear, yet never shrill. - -“You old nuisance!” cried Jane. “Why don’t you ever want to fly? And -why do you sing in that purring alto, just like yourself? I want to -jump over the moon and sing to C above high C! It’s just because you’ve -brown hair!” - -“I don’t know,” suggested Mary. “It was the cow who jumped over the -moon, and cows are supposed to be calm folk. Maybe she was a red cow -though; Mother Goose forgot her complexion.” - -“She ought to have been an Ayreshire cow, going up in the air like -that.” Janie rippled with laughter over this discovery. “Never mind, -Molly Bawn; I’d soon fly back again, if I flew away from you, and I -don’t believe if I flew to the hanging gardens of Babylon I’d be happy -to hang in them, away from the Garden garden, long!” - -“Of course you wouldn’t!” agreed Mary promptly. “We both know there’s -no place like home, but I settle down knowing it, and you keep -fermenting like yeast! That’s what I don’t understand.” - -“Wine sounds nicer than yeast and ferments just as much,” Jane -reproached her. “Yeast is gray and ugly and smelly; grape juice -fermenting is lovely. I can’t help being fizzy! Fuzzy, too, and -red-haired! But I’d never fly far from you, Mary blessing.” And Jane -ran over to hug Mary till she toppled her over. They both laughed, and -returned to their flowers, one cutting, the other transplanting. Jane -resumed her singing, her voice soaring high in “I love the name of -Mary,” transposed to an unreasonable key. - -“I ought to have been the soprano Garden, with my name,” said Mary. -“I’ve the prima donna name and the secunda donna voice--no, the tertia -donna voice--such as it is! The alto isn’t even the second lady of the -opera, is she?” - -“I don’t know! What in all this world is all this learned Latiny -sounding count you’re trying! We’ve always called you our Opera Star, -Mary Garden, haven’t we? I know what the prima donna is, but I don’t -know what your secunda and tertia--oh, I see! Prima is first--yes, I -see! You’re not much like an opera Mary Garden, I suppose, but you -_can_ sing! I love your voice--just like a lovely cat that’s had -plenty of cream, purring all contented on a cushion! Soft and true and -sweet; that’s your voice, little Mary Garden--even if you’re not big -Mary Garden!” - -“Well, Jane!” cried Mary, when Jane paused. “A cat purring, after -cream! But it isn’t as though I thought anything about singing. What -are we trying to get at? I never even think of singing. I see Win -coming out of the house, and I hear Florimel talking like mad. I wonder -what it is, now!” - -“Goodness knows!” sighed Jane, as if anything might be expected of -their youngest--as indeed it might! - -Winchester Garden, the young half-uncle who seemed like a whole brother -to the young girls, came down the central path of the garden to join -Mary and Jane. He was good to look at, lean, but not thin, muscular, -with a swinging easy walk; he had a smooth-shaven, humorous face, -with keen, yet kindly eyes which twinkled in a way that matched a -certain laughing twist of his lips. He was tall and his colouring was -harmonious, hair, eyes, and skin all of a brownish tint. - -“Hallo, little nieces! Hallo, little _nices_!” he called, -correcting himself. - -“Hallo, Win, the winner!” Jane shouted back. “Methinks I hear -Florimel--lifluous,” said Win. - -Mary laughed; Jane did not know what the word meant. - -“Nothing particularly mellifluous about Florimel’s voice just now,” she -said. - -Somewhere beyond the fence arose Florimel’s voice. “Come along!” it was -saying sharply. “Do you think I can drag you! Big as you are? Even if I -knew you wouldn’t bite! Come on!” This more encouragingly. “If you only -won’t be shy,” they heard her add in a tone of exasperated patience, -“I’m sure my sisters will be glad to see you, and some one will help -you out, probably our guardian, Mr. Austin Moulton. He can do ’most -anything of that sort.” - -“Well, what on earth do you suppose the kid has in tow, now, that -requires such an assorted exhortation?” murmured Win. - -Florimel appeared at the wicket gate which admitted to the garden -from the street at the rear of the Garden place. But above her, over -the hedge, arose another head, some ten inches higher than Florimel’s -dark one, the fair head of a boy about eighteen. His face was pale, -his expression troubled, his eyes seemed to ask for pardon for his -intrusion, but he was there. It was only when he followed Florimel -through the gate, at her vehement invitation, that one saw that he -limped. - -Florimel was rosy from earnest and strenuous effort; her brilliant face -was fairly scintillating with excitement, her dark eyes snapping. The -reason for what Win had called her “assorted exhortation” was revealed -by the presence of the lame boy and of a dog which she was gingerly, -yet forcibly, conducting by any part available for seizure, there -being no collar by which to lead her. It was a dog of varied ancestry, -setter and hound predominating. On a groundwork of white a large -liver-coloured spot, like a stray buckwheat cake, was displayed on one -side, and a large liver-coloured spot, with a smaller one just below -it, giving the effect of the print of the sole and heel of a muddy -and large shoe, decorated the dog’s other side. The liver and white -tail which she cheerfully waved was too broad and thick successfully -to carry out its design; so was the body too unevenly developed for -beauty. But the head was really beautiful, with long liver-coloured -ears, soft and fine, carrying out the liver-coloured sides of the face, -divided by a broad white parting from crown to tip of nose. The brown -eyes looking out from this fine head were the softest, loveliest of -dogs’ eyes--and there can be nothing more said in praise of eyes than -this. - -“It’s homeless!” Florimel announced breathlessly. “It hasn’t any home. -It’s been hanging around the hotel and they won’t feed it for fear it -will keep on hanging around. Amy Everett and I found them driving it -off--with brooms!” Florimel’s voice conveyed that this weapon was of -all the most unpardonable. “I grabbed its hair--they said ’twould bite, -but it never would! And I pulled its ears--they’re as soft! And it -licked my nose before I could jump. So I’m going to keep her--please! -We need a dog, really. It is a peach; only a puppy, about six months -old; they said so at the hotel. People had it and dropped it--didn’t -want it. Isn’t it perfectly fiendish the way they do that to cats -and dogs? So I want her. Don’t shake your head, Winchester Garden; -I--want--this--dog!” - -Mary, Jane, and Win had been following this eloquence with various -degrees of embarrassment, for while Florimel introduced the dog she -made no allusion to the boy, whom some people, less animal lovers than -Florimel, might have thought should have been first introduced. He -stood patiently awaiting his turn while Florimel talked. But, after -all, this was less a misfortune than it seemed, for it was absurd -enough to make him laugh, and this put him slightly more at ease, -besides recalling Florimel to her duty. - -“My sakes, I forgot!” she cried, but not in the least contrite. “I met -this--this---- Are you a gentleman or a boy?” she demanded. - -This sent all four of her hearers into a burst of laughter, and -laughter is a good master of ceremonies, abolishing ceremonial. - -“I hope to be a gentleman soon; in the meantime I’d like to be -considered a gentlemanly boy,” said the stranger. His voice and manner -of speaking warranted his hope. “I am eighteen. I guess I’m still a -boy. My name is Mark Walpole. I came to this town because I heard that -there was a chance here for employment, but the place I was after is -filled. I’ve had rather a setback starting out in life. My mother has -been dead some years. There was a fire. It destroyed our house, and my -father was--he died in it. It seems he left nothing behind him; we had -been considered rather well-to-do. I’m afraid his step-brother got the -best of him. He showed he hated me, and that may have been because he -had wronged us. People thought so. He held the land where the house -had been, and there wasn’t any money. I had to start out; of course I -wanted to. I couldn’t have breathed in that town--this all happened -in Massachusetts. So I’m seeking my fortune. This little girl seems -to be in the rescue line to-day. She heard me ask for work; she was -struggling along with this dog. So she annexed me, too! She seemed -to think she knew some one who was sighing for a chance to start me. -I didn’t want to come here with her, but we couldn’t seem to help -it--neither the dog nor I!” The young fellow stopped and smiled at -Florimel, with a glance at the others. - -“Yes, that’s Florimel!” cried Mary, with conviction. “She sweeps all -before her.” - -“She’s a six-cylinder, seventy-five horsepower,” added Win. “But she’s -all right--except when she’s all wrong! This time she’s dead right. -We’re glad you came. Come into the house; there’s supper soon, eh, -Mary?” - -“Indeed there is, a good one!” cried Mary, jumping to her feet. “Of -course Florimel was right, and we are glad you came! Please don’t seem -to be going to refuse to stay, because you must stay, anyway! We love -to have company!” - -“We get dreadfully tired of just ourselves,” added Jane, though this -was an exaggeration of her own occasional moods. “We’re awfully glad -you came. This is Hollyhock House, we are the Garden girls--Mary, -Florimel, Jane.” She touched her own breast with her thumb bent -backward. - -“Winchester Garden,” added Win, with a bow. “I’m Jane’s uncle, but not -worth her introducing. It’s pretty tough to have such disrespectful -nieces! I’m their father’s half-brother. I’m afraid they are all trying -to be sisters to me, not nieces. I know they are _trying_, if -that’s all! Awful trials! Come up with me to my room and let’s wash up -for supper. You said your name was Mark; sure it isn’t Maud? Wish it -were!” - -“Why?” asked the guest, evidently both alarmed and pleased by this -cordiality. - -“We never catch a Maud. We want to say: ‘Come into the Garden, -Maud’--either this nice old garden, or the Garden house--but no one -turns up to fit! Come into the house, anyway. Mark is within three -letters--two--of being Maud.” - -And Win laid his hand on the lame lad’s shoulder, with great kindness -underneath his nonsense, and bore him away in triumph. As he went -the girls heard him saying: “We fit our Tennyson in one way: we’ve a -rosebud garden of girls, three of ’em.” - -“Take the dog around to Abbie, and ask her to feed her and make a place -in the woodhouse for her to sleep. She must stay to-night, anyway,” -said Mary. “Then hurry to get yourself ready for supper, Florimel; -you’re covered with white hair and dogginess!” - -“Good thing to be covered with,” said Florimel. “What’ll we call the -dog, Janie?” - -“I was thinking; Chum is a nice name for a dog,” said Jane. - -“It’s a fine name!” cried Mary. - -And Florimel saw that her dog was safe. “But I knew you’d love her, -you darling things!” she cried, as she tore off, with her large and -cheerful outcast rushing after her. - - - - -CHAPTER TWO - -“WHO LOVES A GARDEN LOVES A GREENHOUSE, TOO” - - -“We call our house a greenhouse, though it is made of red brick, -because it grew all the Gardens,” explained Mary, when Win brought -their unexpected guest down to supper. - -The boy was less pale for a vigorous towelling, but he looked -uncomfortable, like one who could neither account for his being there -nor feel that he ought to be there. Mary saw at a glance that Win had -adopted him without reservation during their absence. Win was a most -definite person toward his acquaintances; one was never in doubt as to -his attitude toward them. He loved, or he loved them not, and one never -had to have recourse to a daisy to find out which it was. He kept his -hand on the lame lad’s shoulder, as he entered the dining-room, and -smiled at him with peculiar kindness. - -“Yes, we consider that a subtle bit of cleverness!” Win supplemented -Mary. “The house is a greenhouse for growing the Garden roses--see?” -He waved his hand toward Mary and Jane. “It has grown other Garden -plants, for that matter. My grandfather, the girls’ great-grandfather, -built it, and it was owned by my father, and then by my elder brother, -their father. I was born in it; so were they. It went to two oldest -sons; then that last one had nothing but three worthless girls to leave -it to!” Win scowled fearfully at them. - -“It’s a dandy house,” said the stranger, looking around him. - -It really was! The hall ran through the middle of it, with big rooms -on either hand and windows catching the sun’s rays in turn, as the -solid house was swung around him. The dining-room got the last of the -daylight, facing westward as it did. A glowing sunset lighted up the -round mahogany table, in the centre of the room, and its snowy damask, -brilliant glass, and silver. Fine old steel engravings of Landseer’s -pictures hung around the wall; the chairs were solid, high of back. The -room gave an effect of cheer, and space, and plenty. - -“I feel horribly uncomfortable, intruding,” said the guest, looking -with convincing appeal and a flushed face at the girls. - -“I don’t think you could call it intruding to stay when you are urged -to--and wanted--do you?” asked Mary. - -“My only fear is there mayn’t be enough to eat!” said Win. - -“There is, then!” declared a new voice, and they all turned to see -Abbie Abbott, bringing in a tray with creamed chicken garnished with -parsley, and a steaming plate piled with flaky biscuits. Abbie might -have been almost any age between twenty-five and sixty-five; in reality -she was halfway between those two ages, and a character. - -“You’ve enough to feed six delegates to a convention--and they’re the -hungriest things I ever come across, Mr. Win! Mr. Moulton and Mis’ -Moulton called on the phome and said they’d be over to-night,” added -Abbie. - -“We always say Mr. and Mrs. Moulton called,” remarked Jane, as Abbie -disappeared. “You don’t speak of every one together as you do them. I -wonder why!” - -“And you don’t hear people calling over the ‘phome’ unless you happen -to be Abbie Abbott,” added Win. “Sounds like a sea song. - - “I heard a voice across the foam: - To-night I’ll tread the Garden loam; - Helm hard a-lee, I’m sailing home!” - -“Win, you ridiculous fellow!” cried Mary, with her merry laugh. - -Jane ran to him and shook him approvingly; Jane could never approve -heartily without violence. “You lovely idiot!” she cried. - -Florimel dashed into the room and collided with Abbie bringing Saratoga -chips and tomatoes. “Oh, gracious!” cried Florimel, dropping into a -chair. - -“You may well say so!” said Abbie sternly, as she skilfully saved her -burden from wreck. “Good thing it wasn’t next trip, with the coffee-pot -steaming hot and the diddly cream jug!” - -“Now we are all here; we don’t have to wait any longer,” announced -Mary, with evident relief. “Grubbing in the garden makes me hungry.” - -“Let me wait on Mr. Walpole, because I found him; Chum was starving,” -said Florimel, and they all laughed. - -“So am I,” said the guest, accepting the skipping Saratoga potatoes -which Florimel aimed at his plate, or as many of them as arrived there. -“But my name is Mark.” - -“Nice, handy one, too; can’t be shortened,” said Win. “We’ll all be -first-name friends from now on. I’m the oldest of the lot and I’m only -six years older than Mark. What’s your specialty, Mark? Any special -work you’re after?” - -“Paying work,” said Mark, with a laugh. “I did intend to study a good -while longer. I’m not prepared for any special work; not ready for it, -I’m afraid, but it has to be found, if it’s wrapping grocery parcels. -I’d like to work with a botanist; I know more about botany than -anything else.” - -“And Mr. Moulton is botany crazy, in an amateurish way!” cried Mary. - -“I wonder how a person is an amateur lunatic,” murmured Jane. - -“Now, who’d expect you, of all people, to ask that, Jane?” said Win -suggestively. “Mr. Moulton is at work on a tremendous book, more -tremendous than it will ever be book, I’m afraid. He’ll never finish -it! ‘A Study of the Flora of New York,’ he calls it, and he’s making a -herbarium as big as the book. Maybe he’d take you to help on it.” - -“If I could do it,” said Mark doubtfully. - -“If nobody can possibly eat another bite, nor drink another drop, -suppose we go out and watch the stars come out, and wait for Mr. and -Mrs. Moulton to come over,” suggested Mary. - -“If it was anybody else, or we were anybody else,” said Florimel, “and -Mr. and Mrs. Moulton was their guardian--Mr. Moulton, really, but Mrs. -Moulton does more guarding than he does--we’d call them Uncle Austin -and Aunt Althea, but we never do. Mr. and Mrs. to them means just as -much as uncle and aunt do when other girls say it to people who aren’t -any relation. Mr. and Mrs. Moulton like us to call them what they -really are; not relations, when they’re not.” - -Mark laughed, and Win said: “Strain that, kiddums, to clear your -remarks. They’re badly mixed.” - -Mary explained to Mark: “Florimel means that we never fell into the -way of calling people who weren’t related to us uncle and aunt, but -Mr. Moulton and Mrs. Moulton are two of our cornerstones. I do wish -Mr. Moulton would let you help him. Very likely his book will never be -published, but I’m sure it’s fine, and as interesting as it can be to -work on. Mr. Moulton would be so happy if a young person were working -with him. All we can do is listen when he tells us about it, or reads -us bits, but he knows quite well that we don’t understand any more about -the scientific part of it than a telephone receiver would, and that -must be discouraging.” - -“I don’t know what your Mr. Moulton would want of me, but I’d be -glad enough if he could use me. You see I meant to go on studying, -go to college and specialize and maybe teach, and do something worth -doing in botany. But that’s knocked on the head.” Mark tried to speak -carelessly, but the tang of disappointment was in his voice. - -“No telling which is the short cut to your destination when you’re -young and all roads stretch out before you, my son,” said Win, -answering this note in the younger lad’s voice and laying a hand on his -shoulder with a mock paternal air. “Come on outside, and take a course -in botany and astronomy, sitting in our garden watching the stars come -out.” - -“Just a moment, Win,” murmured Mary. She laid a detaining hand on Win’s -arm, and Mark followed Jane and Florimel through the door that led -directly into the garden from the dining-room. - -“Aren’t we to keep him overnight?” Mary asked. “It may be he hasn’t -much money for lodgings, and morning seems the right time to set out.” - -“Why, of course, Lady Bountiful,” Win concurred heartily. “Sure thing -we’re going to keep him to-night! He’s a mighty nice little chap, if -he is out seeking his fortune, and Florimel did pick him up--like the -dog!” - -“He’s very nice,” Mary agreed. “He has lived among nice people. But he -isn’t a little chap, Win; he’s taller than you are.” - -“What are inches?” demanded Win. “When you are twenty-four, my child, -you will understand that eighteen is mere infancy.” - -“In fancy! Yes, it is!” cried Mary saucily. “In reality twenty-four is -nothingness.” - -“Disrespectful to your uncle! Bringing his dark hairs in sorrow to the -gray!” growled Win, stalking after the others to the garden. - -Mary ran out to look for Anne, whom she knew she should find at that -hour helping Abbie get the supper dishes out of the way. - -“Anne, Anne dear, Anne Kennington!” she called as she came. - -“Mary, lass, what is it?” Anne answered, coming to meet her. - -She was a tall Englishwoman of about thirty-five, with the brightness -of her youthful brilliant colouring beginning to fade. The red in -her cheeks was hardening as the whiteness around it browned, but her -eyes still flashed fires out of their depth of blue, and her hair was -almost black. She moved with a free, indifferent swing as if she had -been born under the Declaration of Independence instead of the English -queen. But her devotion to the Garden girls partook of the loyalty of a -subject, while it was, at the same time, all maternal. - -“We have a guest for the night, a nice boy a year older than I am, who -came to Vineclad looking for work. Florimel met him and brought him -home with her to see Mr. Moulton. Is the little room in order?” asked -Mary. - -“Little room, and big room, and middle-sized room, all the guest-rooms -are in order,” said Anne, resenting the question. “But staying the -night here, Mary? A tramp!” - -“Mercy, no! A gentleman and very really!” Mary set her right. “His home -was burned, his father was killed in the fire, and, instead of being -left well-off, he had nothing. He is from Massachusetts, he didn’t say -where; his name is Mark Walpole. Win thinks he is fine--it isn’t merely -girls’ judgment.” - -“And Winchester Garden is only a big boy; what does he know of reading -character? Though he would be a good judge of breeding,” Anne conceded. -“I suppose a night of him won’t ruin the place, though what with -Florimel bringing home that dog and now a boy, there’s no telling what -the end will be! Of course I knew he was at supper; he looks a nice -sort; I’ll grant him that. Go on, Mary; Mr. and Mrs. Moulton are this -minute crossing over. I’ll see that the ewer is filled in the boy’s -room, and more than that it doesn’t need done to it; that, and a pair -of towels.” - -“There’s no housekeeper like our Anne! You can’t catch her napping,” -laughed Mary, hastening out to help receive her guardian and his wife. - -The Garden girls and their absurdly un-uncle-fied young uncle had a -habit of sitting out in their garden in the evening from such an early -date in the spring that everybody croaked “malaria,” till so late a -date in the autumn that, figuratively speaking, the neighbourhood -clothed them in shrouds and got out its own funeral garments. - -But Vineclad, sitting some fifteen miles back from the Hudson River, -never administered malaria to its trusting children, and the old Garden -garden could never have been persuaded to harm its three girls, between -whom and it was a love profoundly sympathetic. - -Mary found Jane, Florimel, Win, and Mark, with Chum nearby, in the -comfortable wicker chairs which stood about on the grass with which -the garden emphasized its paths, permitting it to grow as a small lawn -on the west side of the house. Mr. and Mrs. Moulton were just coming -toward them through the broad path which led directly from the side -gate. - -Mr. Moulton was not above medium height. His hair was grizzled, as was -his short-cropped moustache; he stooped and peered at the world through -large-lensed glasses, as if he regarded everything, collectively and -separately, as specimens. Mrs. Moulton, on the other hand, carried -herself so erect that she might have been protesting that the specimens -were not worth while. No one had ever seen her dishevelled, nor dressed -with less than elegant appropriateness to the time and occasion. The -result was that she conveyed an effect of elderliness though she -was not quite fifty years old, which is young in this period of the -world’s progress. Her light-brown hair showed no thread of gray, her -aristocratic face was still but lightly lined, and her complexion was -fair, yet one thought of her as of a person growing old, though doing -so with great nicety. - -The three Garden girls sprang up to meet these arrivals with the -alacrity and deference which was the combination of manner that Mrs. -Moulton liked. Florimel damaged the effect this time by overturning her -chair and stepping on Chum’s tail. Both chair and dog bounded as this -happened and Chum howled, too newly adopted to be sure the injury was -not intended. - -“A dog, my dear?” asked Mrs. Moulton of Jane, at that moment kissing -her cheek. But she looked beyond Chum at Mark, as being, in every -sense, the larger object. - -“Yes, Mrs. Moulton,” said Jane, curbing her desire to laugh. “Florimel -found it lost, and brought it home. We have adopted it as a friend; it -seems to be obedient and good tempered.” She flashed a look at Mark, -calling upon him to appreciate this doubly accurate description. Her -hair, rumpled by the breeze, seemed to flash with her eyes; it looked -like a part of the afterglow in the west now illumining the garden. - -“Dog!” said Mr. Moulton, who had not discovered Chum. “Looks like a boy -to me, a boy I don’t know.” He peered at Mark through his large glasses. - -Win presented Mark, instinctively feeling that it would incline Mr. and -Mrs. Moulton more favourably toward Mark if Win, and not the young -girls, assumed the responsibility for him. - -“Walpole, did you say?” Mrs. Moulton repeated after Win. “Mark Walpole? -What was your father’s name? I knew of Walpoles in Massachusetts--what -was your town?” - -“Worcester, and my father’s name was Cathay. My grandfather was in -India, and was pretty tired of it. He named my father Cathay because -he felt as though he had been there a hundred years, had ‘a cycle of -Cathay,’ you know. Hard on my father to get such a name, wasn’t it?” -replied Mark. - -“That’s the Walpole I meant!” Mrs. Moulton triumphed. “The very one! I -didn’t know him, but a friend of my girlhood did; one couldn’t forget -that name. Suppose you sit here and talk to me.” She led the way to a -bench and motioned Mark to a place beside her. - -“And suppose you sit _here_ and talk to _me_!” echoed her -husband, drawing a chair close to the one he took and inviting Mary to -it. Mr. Moulton availed himself of most opportunities to appropriate -Mary, his favourite of the three girls whom his friend had left to his -guardianship, dear as they all were to him. - -But the conversation did not divide itself off into duets. Mr. -Moulton ceased to draw from Mary her story of the doings of the Garden -household since his last report, and Jane and Florimel, neither of whom -was often silent, joined in listening to Mrs. Moulton’s catechism of -Mark and his answers. - -“It isn’t as if I were all right, you know,” Mark said quietly, when he -had told her of his aim to make his way in the world, though his hope -of preparing to follow the course he would have chosen had been wiped -out. “I’m lame. It doesn’t bother me much, but it will probably get in -the way of lots of things a sound boy might do. I got my foot smashed -when I was a little chap and it couldn’t be mended to be as good as -new. But I’m sure I’ll limp into something--something that will keep me -out of the bread line!” - -“Mark was telling me, Mr. Moulton,” interposed Win, seeing his chance, -“that he had gone quite far in botany, already he was planning to -specialize in it, when he was thrown out of his own place in the world. -I thought that would interest you.” - -“Why not?” said Mr. Moulton, turning from Mary to scrutinize Mark anew, -scowling at him nearsightedly. “As to being thrown out of your place -in the world, my lad, there’s no power on earth can play you that -trick; it’s every man’s work to make the place he’s in his own place. -It’s a consoling truth--and most absolutely a truth--that a man often -grows bigger himself for having to fit himself to a smaller place than -he had expected to fill. As to this ambition of yours interesting me, -touch a man on his hobby and there is not much question of interesting -him! I’m a botanist by choice and profession, though luckily for me -I could afford to be! I live in spite of it, not by means of it. I’m -working on a vast herbarium and a big book: ‘A Study of the Flora of -New York.’ Now if you knew enough to help me--I’m not sure it would be -just to your future, but--I could use a clever youngster who had what -I’d call botanical common sense as well as sympathy. Come and see me -to-morrow morning! I can measure you if I have you in my study, but -not here. From the beginning a garden, a garden with even one girl in -it, proved fatal to planning for a happy future!” Mr. Moulton twinkled -behind his owl-like lenses. His wife arose to go. - -“When Mr. Moulton becomes facetious I say good-night,” she remarked. -“I have a few chapters of my library book to finish before I sleep. -We came only to be assured the Garden children still blossomed. -Fancy finding Cathay Walpole’s boy here!” She arose with a rustling, -impressive dignity, and her husband meekly arose also. - -“Another reminiscence of that first garden--I do what the woman bids -me,” he said. - -The three girls kissed both their guardian and his wife, and offered -their own cool cheeks to receive their good-night kiss. Then they -escorted them to the gate, while Win strolled beyond it with them, -accompanying them home. Jane and Florimel joined hands and danced like -nymphs up the walk. It was always a strain upon them to keep up to Mrs. -Moulton’s standards of propriety during one of their visits. Mary ran -after the two, having lingered a little to say a last word to their -old friends. Jane switched her skirts, held out in both hands, as she -danced alone around the lawn. Florimel took Chum’s forepaws and tried -to get her to dance, but the big puppy growled a protest and Florimel -gave it up. - -“Chum knows the hesitation, all right,” observed Mark. - -Florimel caught Mary as she came and swayed her in a mad dance of her -own devising. - -“Mrs. Moulton knew your father! Mr. Moulton is going to love you for -old botany’s sake. I’ve been lucky fishing to-day!” Florimel chanted. -“And to-morrow you’ll go to see Mr. Moulton, and I’m going to give Chum -a bath.” - -Mark laughed, and looked admiringly at her brilliant beauty. - -“What is it about helping lame dogs over stiles? That’s been your job -to-day, Miss Gypsy Florimel!” - -“We always have nice times,” said Mary, as if good luck for Mark and -rescue of Chum had been her personal gain. “Come into the house.” - -“Such a kindly, motherly house; I love it,” said Mark. - -“It’s the greenhouse, you know, for us Garden slips, so it has to be -warm and sort of hospitable,” Jane reminded him. - -They all passed in through the wide door, into the broad hall, and the -light from the bend of the wide staircase fell on four happy young -faces, and, Mark rightly thought, on three of the prettiest girls he -had ever seen together. - -“It’s a lucky greenhouse with its specimens,” he said shyly, but with a -smile at Mary. - - - - -CHAPTER THREE - -“A ROSEBUD SET WITH LITTLE WILFUL THORNS” - - -Jane was almost always the first of the Garden girls to come down in -the morning. She was as full of moods, varying in light and shade, as -the surface of a pool overhung with branches. Throughout some of her -days she chattered and sang in the wildest of high spirits from dawn -till dark. Again she fell into deep wells of silence where nothing -could reach her; remote and inaccessible she wrapped herself in her own -thoughts, refusing to amuse or to be amused on these days. Whatever her -mood, after the spring had come she was faithful to her flower-bed in -the garden. Mary worked in hers more steadily, Florimel with greater -gusto--when she worked--but Jane gave her bed the place of a beloved -volume of poetry, in which she read daily. When the birds and the -eastern sky were timing up together, in sound and colour, Jane sped -lightly down the stairs and outdoors to look for overnight developments -in her flowers and to sing above them. - -“You sing to your posies for all the world the way the birds sing to -waken the spring flowers!” Mary once said to her. - -“If I’m a bird I’m a red-headed woodpecker, Molly darling, and he -doesn’t sing,” retorted Jane, rumpling her brilliant locks. - -The morning after Mark’s arrival Jane’s custom held good. Before any -one else was downstairs she opened the door and went out into the -fragrance and music of the late May morning, into the lovely old -garden. Had there been any one there to see, they would have noticed -that Jane wore her new brown street gown, not one of the simple -chambrays in which she ordinarily said good-morning to her seedlings, -who waited in bed for her coming--in fact, stayed in bed all day. - -In a few moments there was some one to note this variation. Florimel -followed Jane into the garden shortly, and instantly was upon her with -an accusation. - -“You’re dressed up, Jane Garden; where’re you going?” she cried. - -“Florimel, don’t speak so loud,” Jane frowned at her. “I don’t want -Mary to know, not till I get back; of course I’ll tell her afterward. I -won’t tell you where I’m going; then you can truthfully say you don’t -know where I am when they ask.” - -“They won’t get a chance to ask; I’m going with you,” announced -Florimel. - -“Indeed you’re not! You can’t! I wouldn’t mind, I’d like to have you, -but you simply can’t,” declared Jane. “Don’t be a nuisance and a baby, -Mel; I can’t let you go, or I would,” she added out of her experiences -in Florimel’s possibilities. - -“I simply will go, unless you tell me where it is you’re going, and I -see for myself I can’t go or I don’t want to,” declared Florimel. “Of -course that’s plain silly, Jane. I can go wherever you go. If you tell -me where it is and I do happen to stay at home I won’t tell Mary or any -one. But if you don’t tell me I’ll tell what you just said and get them -all stirred up--Mary, Win, Anne, everybody. And you know what I say -I’ll do, I’ll do.” - -Jane knew precisely this truth. “I can’t take you, Florimel, because -you’re too young,” she said unwisely. - -“Two years and three months younger than you are!” interposed Florimel -scornfully. “What’s that!” - -“A lot when I’m only fifteen,” said Jane. “I’m going before breakfast; -I’ve had all I want out of the pantry. Well, then, Mel, I’ll tell you, -but it’s on your word of honour not to say anything till I do--you -promised!” - -“Don’t I know I promised?” retorted Florimel. “And don’t you know wild -horses and hot pokers couldn’t get me to tell, if I said I wouldn’t? -Then hurry up!” - -“I’ve always thought I had talent to act,” Jane announced. She -continued, disregarding Florimel’s hastily stifled laughter: “I -thought, maybe, I ought to go on the stage--of course not yet, but -after I was, say three years older, and had studied for it. There’s -a company in town now--acted in the Crystal Theatre last night. They -are going away this morning on the 10.10. The leading lady’s name is -Alyssa Aldine--I think Aldine always sounds like nice people; I suppose -because the Aldine editions of books are so famous. Then I read such -nice-sounding things about her in the Vineclad _Post_ that I knew -she wasn’t one of the ordinary actresses; she must be beautiful and -clever. And it came to me like a flash that I would slip off early this -morning, and get to the hotel before they leave, and ask to see Miss -Aldine and get her to tell me frankly whether she thinks I ought to -go on the stage. A girl ought to try to find out just as early as she -can what is her work in the world. I suppose I could recite and sing -to Miss Aldine, if I had to, though I’d dread it. You see there aren’t -many chances to get good advice about the stage, here; it isn’t often -that talented, refined ladies come to Vineclad to act, they say.” - -Florimel had heard this speech of Jane’s with utter amazement and -disgust on her handsome face, which, childish though it was, was quite -capable of expressing disgust with its black eyes and curling red lips. - -“Well, Jane! Well, Jane _Garden_!” Florimel cried scornfully the -instant Jane paused. “Talk about my being younger than you are! Why, -you’re a _baby_! Haven’t you heard Win talk about the companies -that come to the Crystal? One-night-stand companies, he says, that -travel about in the country towns, are never any good! We never go. The -idea of your going to call on this actress and asking her--well----” -Florimel broke off, unable to express herself more satisfyingly. - -“I told you, Florimel, that I read about Miss Aldine in the _Post_ -and she is _not_ one of that ordinary kind,” said Jane severely. -“I _am_ going. It can’t do any harm, and it may do good. Don’t -you tell Mary till I get back; don’t tell her at all; I will. But you -can’t go with me.” - -“I can and I will,” said Florimel in the tone which her family had -learned to recognize as final. “I’m going to see you don’t get -kidnapped by these queer people. Take Anne, if you’re bound to go! But -you won’t! So I’m going. I know you, Jane Garden. When you got there -you’d double up, you’d be so scared. That’s you all over, getting up -some perfectly crazy idea like this and then all but dying doing it, -when there never was the least bit of sense in doing it, anyway! I’ll -get a sandwich and my hat. Crazy Jane, that’s what you are!” - -Florimel walked off rigid with determination, excitement, and -disapproval, leaving Jane with a sense of their youngest’s competence, -and relief that, after all, she was not going upon her adventure alone. -Florimel returned with her sandwich and her hat disposed each in its -proper place and manner. The sandwich had become plural; luckily the -hat had not. “I put a scrawl on Mary’s napkin telling her we had gone -downtown on a secret errand, but would be back by ten,” said Florimel. -“Good thing I didn’t run into Anne; she’d have been hard to quiet -down. You’ve got on your street suit, and I haven’t, but I guess this -is good enough.” - -“You look very nice in that green and white chambray, Mel,” said Jane -meekly. And the sisters sallied forth by the side gate of the garden -into the quiet, shaded street. - -It was a long walk to the heart of the small town where stood the -Waldorf, Vineclad’s shabby and unique hotel, near the Crystal Theatre, -which escaped by not much more than its name being merely a small town -hall. Hollyhock House stood well beyond the collected business of -Vineclad, out beyond the smaller homes of the place, built where acres -for its setting and for its garden had been obtainable. - -Jane and Florimel timed their progress to get to the hotel before -eight, but they fell below their estimate of time required and got to -the hotel somewhat before half-past seven. - -“Good morning, young ladies,” said the clerk, as the girls halted -before his desk. “You are familiar to me, yet I cannot place you. What -can I do for you? Are you denizens of our lovely town?” - -“Yes,” said Jane, without further enlightening him. “I want to see Miss -Aldine, Miss Alyssa Aldine. She doesn’t know me, but please ask if I -may see her--on business, important business.” - -The clerk leaned over his desk as if to take the young girls into his -confidence and Jane and Florimel fell back a few steps. - -“Why, bless your lovely face and heart,” he said, “what time -do you think the perfesh, which stop here, rises?--especially -the lady perfeshes? Just in time to take the train! -Just--barely--in--time--to--take--the--train, hustling!” He, too, -fell back at this and regarded the girls triumphantly. “Breakfast in -bed--also in curl papers--and a hustle to make the train. That’s the -racket. Grand show last night; was you to it? Pity! Grand show. Now, -I’ll tell you what to do. You go sit down comfortable in two of the -Waldorf’s rockers, in the parlour, and wait calm and easy. And I’ll get -a message up to Miss Aldine just’s soon as I think she will stand for -it, and see if she won’t meet you. Peachy lady, she is, but I’ll tell -her there’s two little girls here worth her looking at. Is that a go? -Best I can do.” - -“Thank you,” said Jane faintly, already dismayed by the unaccustomed -atmosphere which she was breathing. “Yes, thank you; we’ll wait.” - -[Illustration: “‘WHAT TIME DO YOU THINK THE PERFESH, WHICH STOP HERE, -RISES?’”] - -“It’s all right; it’s very early, earlier than we thought we’d get -here. Don’t hurry,” Florimel supplemented Jane with decision. “For -goodness’ sake, Jane, now you are here, don’t fade right out! Didn’t -I say you’d be like that?” she added in a severe whisper as Jane and -she followed their guide to the overwhelming red plush of the Waldorf -parlour. - -The time of waiting seemed desperately long to both girls. The -grandfather clock ticking in the corner--it had been manufactured to -sell with a large order of cigars in the most recent of periods--seemed -to accomplish less by its seconds than any other clock Jane and -Florimel had ever met. At last an hour passed, and twenty minutes -followed it. Then the clerk returned with a smiling face and the -important manner of a triumphant ambassador. - -“You’re to come right up to her room,” he whispered, not because there -was any one else there to hear, but because his words were too precious -to be scattered broadcast. “I done my best for you, and she’ll see you.” - -Jane and Florimel arose at once. Jane was so pale that the clerk -noticed it. “Don’t be scared,” he advised her kindly. “She’s easy -to get acquainted with.” He took the girls up one flight of stairs -and along a dusty corridor, carpeted in red and smelling of ancient -histories. - -“Here’s the room!” announced the clerk, swinging around a right angle -turn in the corridor and pausing before a door at the end of the wing -thus reached. “Number 22!” he added, as if announcing the capital prize -in a lottery. He knocked for the girls, seeing them overwhelmed, and -withdrew with a wink that might have meant anything. - -“Stay out!” cried a feminine voice. - -Rightly construing this as humour, Jane timidly opened the door. She -saw before her a blowsy looking woman, in a pink kimono, its thin -quality and flowing amplitude, as well as its heavy, once-white lace -trimming, adding to the extreme rotundity of its wearer. Her hair was -in curl papers, her feet in soiled pink “mules.” Beyond her sat a small -woman, thin and tired looking, but animated, and still another with an -indefinite face. Three men also adorned the room, all smoking; one of -them was helping the indefinite woman to cram garments, that had not -been folded, into a suitcase. - -“Well, you pretty pair!” exclaimed the wearer of the pink kimono. “Say, -Petey, what d’you know about this? Some lookers to drop in at this -hour in a deserted village, what?” - -“Right-o! Nice little pair, eh, Nettie?” the man addressed threw the -question back at the pink kimono; plainly this was their preferred way -of conversing. - -“May we---- Is Miss Aldine---- May we see Miss Aldine?” stammered Jane. - -An exceedingly pudgy hand, decorated with several rings of great -distinctness but little distinction, and souvenirs of buttered toast, -dramatically struck the pink kimono where it was pinned together with a -rhinestone bar. - -“I am Miss Aldine--on the stage--Alyssa Aldine, leading lady of the -comp’ny. In private I’m Mrs. Pete Mivle--he’s Sydney Fleming on the -stage, plays leadin’ man to my heroines.” Mrs. Mivle beamed proudly on -her Pete, who assumed a look reminiscent of his more picturesque rôles -and twirled his moustache with a hand upon which a diamond of at least -three karats gleamed, genuine but yellowish. - -“Got that off a chap that went stoney broke, at a bargain,” he -exclaimed, seeing Jane’s eyes fastened upon it with what he took for -awe. - -“Say, what d’you want?” continued Miss Aldine, actually Mrs. Mivle, -kindly, but in a businesslike tone. “Not that we ain’t pleased to -death to see you, but you must of had an objec’ in comin’--or was it -for my autograph? Pete writes ’em.” - -“Oh, no!” cried Jane, dismayed to hear sounds in Florimel’s throat that -meant she was suffocating with laughter. “I came--I thought----” She -stopped. - -“Say it!” advised the small, thin woman who looked past forty, and who -played the young girl parts in the company’s repertory because of her -diminutive size. “We’ve breakfasted; we won’t eat you! Get it out of -your system.” - -“I meant to ask your advice about studying for the stage,” Jane said, -by a supreme effort. “But there’s no use troubling you; ever so much -obliged.” - -“Cold feet so soon?” suggested Peter Mivle kindly. “Lots of kids get -stage struck! If you wanted to follow the legitimate, we could use you. -Of course you’re too young, but there are ways of dodging the law. -You’d make a great team, red and black, blond and brunette. Sisters?” - -“Oh, no; I meant to study to be an actress when I’m older, if it was -surely my proper talent,” said Jane. “Never mind; thank you ever so -much.” - -Mrs. Mivle laughed. “Lady Macbeth and all that kind, eh?” she -suggested. “We play old comedy and society plays, like ‘East Lynne,’ -‘Ten Nights in a Bar Room,’ and so on. Shakespeare’s no good; we’ve got -some funny ones, too. Take it from me, kid, it’s hard work keepin’ on -the go every day, sleepin’ in damp sheets and beds that are about as -soft as coal beds half the time. One-night-stand companies don’t find -many snaps layin’ along the tracks. And there ain’t much in it. But we -have good times enough together; no jealousy nor meanness in our gang. -You drop the stage notion and trim hats! Easier, and you can stick -to one boardin’-house and make good money. Ain’t you two got a home, -pretty girls like you? You’d think anybody’d have adopted ’em,” she -added, turning again to Peter. - -“Oh, yes,” cried Jane, “we have a lovely--a home. We--I mean I only -wanted your advice----” She stopped again. - -Florimel could not resist her temptation. “My sister thought perhaps -she had so much talent for acting that it was her duty to go on the -stage. She read about Miss Aldine in the Vineclad _Post_ and -came to ask her advice, whether she thought she ought to study for the -stage. That’s all.” - -Florimel’s eyes danced and Mrs. Mivle and the elderly actress of -youthful parts twinkled back at her. - -“The little one has the drop on you, my dear,” Mrs. Mivle said joyously -to Jane. “She’s got practical sense. I guess you’re up in the clouds; -red-haired girls often are. But you’ve got hair that ’twould be worth -being up into anything--or up _against_ anything to have! If -you’ve got a good home, what you botherin’ about? Stick to it; that’s -what I say. I’m an artist all right, all right; you read what your -paper says about me. But no art in mine, if I had the means to settle -right down and bake pies like mother used to make. Must you go? Well, -good-bye and good luck. So long! Hope to meet you again. Come see us -act if ever we take in this town on this circuit again. We’re the -real thing, if I do say it!” The others of the company bade Jane and -Florimel good-bye, shaking hands with them with the utmost cordiality, -and Peter Mivle, or “Sydney Fleming,” escorted them to the stairs. - -Jane heard the laugh that arose behind them in the room they had left, -but she also heard “Miss Aldine” say heartily: “Perfect beauts, that’s -what!” And the voice of the little woman came out to them, saying -pensively: “Oh, Nettie Mivle, ain’t it fine to be young like that, and -not acting it!” - -Jane and Florimel walked swiftly out of the little hotel with the great -name, escaping from the clerk’s evident desire to learn the result of -their call and its object, and from the idle lads who were gathering -around the desk to see the actors, whose “show” they had seen the -night before, come out and to compare actual appearances with those -behind the footlights. The walk home was a silent one for Jane, but -at intervals Florimel burst into laughter that was irresistible to -passers-by and irrepressible to Florimel. Mary was busy when they came -in, arranging the flowers which the garden yielded; not many yet in -variety, but generous in quantity, even in May. - -“Where can you two have been?” cried Mary, looking up with her sweet -face smiling at them in a way that seemed to match the flowers beneath -her cool finger-tips. “And so early? What are you up to, Garden girls? -Have you had any breakfast, you rogues?” - -“Oh, Mary, wait till you hear!” cried Florimel, throwing her hat in one -direction and herself in another, on a chair. “We’ve been to see Miss -Aldine; Jane wanted to be examined, but she changed her mind. Petey -Mivle--that’s Sydney Fleming--said she----” - -“Florimel, what can you be talking about?” cried Mary. “Who are all -these people? Examined by whom, and for what?” - -“Oh, I’ll tell you, Mary,” Jane took up the theme impatiently. -“Florimel is so silly! Of course it was funny, only how was I to know -Miss Aldine was Mrs. Mivle and that what the _Post_ said wasn’t -so?” Jane laughed at herself, her sense of humour too strong to allow -her to feel annoyed with Florimel long. - -“Positively I believe you’ve both gone crazy together, over night!” -cried Mary. “Miss Aldine is Mrs. Mivle, you say? And Florimel is -talking of ‘Petey Mivle’--like a schoolmate--and the _Post_---- -Hurry the story!” - -“Sit down, Mary, and I’ll harrow your young blood!” declared Jane, and -forthwith gave her sister an account of her resolution to seek a great -actress to ask advice on her career, and of the visit to the Waldorf. -Jane told her story so well that Mary and Florimel and Anne, who had -come in to find out what her younger charges had been doing, were all -three in convulsions. It might have warranted any one in thinking that -Jane was right in considering the stage her vocation. - -“Oh, me, oh, me!” sighed Mary, emerging from the sofa pillows into -which she had helplessly fallen. “You do such mad things, Janie! And -you are so wilful! You ought not to have started off alone on such -an errand, to people you knew absolutely nothing about! Florimel -is a headstrong child, but even she is more prudent. They must be -kind people, if they are untidy, and flashy, and trashy! I’m glad -they were so nice to you. Please, Jane, settle down and stop being -restless-minded!” - -“Can’t do it,” said Jane promptly. “I suppose there’s fire inside -my head and the roots of my hair are in it. That’s why I’m always -crackling off in explosions, and why my hair is red.” - -“And I suppose we want you to be just what you are, if we tell the -truth,” added Mary as she went out of the room. She could not bear to -seem to criticise Jane or Florimel, being sensitively alive to a dread -of hurting them, and conscious of the slight difference in their ages. - -Florimel ran after Mary, and Anne Kennington turned to Jane. - -“What put the stage into your head, Jane?” she asked. “Were you -thinking of your mother? You don’t look like her, but you are more like -her, in some ways, than either of the others.” - -“My mother?” echoed Jane. “Mercy, no, Anne! Why should I?” - -“Well, of course she did not go on the stage, yet singing is, in a -way, like it,” said Anne. “You know your mother was a singer and she -couldn’t keep away from the old life: singing, and applause, and all -that, after she was a widow. You know she left you here to go back to -it.” - -“Yes, I knew all that,” said Jane slowly, “but I seem to have to try to -know it; it isn’t real to me. I never can make my mother real to me, -Anne. You knew her. I wish you could make me feel what she was like.” - -“Knew her? I came over with her before she married and I stayed with -her till she went back to England. She left me; never I her,” said Anne -warmly. “Just a slender bit of a thing was she, like a primrose, one -that you couldn’t help spoiling, such coaxing ways she had and such a -pretty face, with a little droop of her shoulders and a fall in her -voice as if she begged a body to be good to her. I’d have cut off my -head for her willingly. So I stayed, and did my best for her babies, -without her.” - -“And what a best!” cried Jane, with a flashing look of grateful love. -“Oh, I wish I had seen her! You make her a darling, Anne; just a sort -of toy mother, to be petted and to be proud of! Why did she die, Anne? -Do you know? No one ever told us; not even Mary knows about her death.” - -“I never heard one word about her dying, Jane; never the time, nor -place, nor any syllable,” said Anne truthfully. “I mustn’t stand -clacketing here any longer, Jane; I’ve more to do than I’ve minutes, -though the good Lord gives to each of us all the time there is, if only -we think about it.” - -Anne hastened away, and Jane walked over to the window, absently -watching Mark Walpole returning from his call on Mr. Moulton, though -without consciously seeing him, nor remembering that she had been -deeply interested in the result of this visit. - -“What a pretty little toy mother! How I wish I had her, or had even -seen her!” thought Jane, swinging the shade pull. “And now Mary can’t -remember her more than as a shadow before a mirror! Oh, little coaxing -mother, I wonder why you left your three girl babies? Perhaps because -you were only a girl yourself. But we lost something we can never get -back.” - - - - -CHAPTER FOUR - -“HOME AT EVENING’S CLOSE, TO SWEET REPAST AND CALM REPOSE” - - -Mark Walpole came up the walk at a rapid gait, swinging one arm and -breathing through his puckered lips as though he were whistling, though -the tune of it was in his mind only; no sound came forth. Mary met him -at the door with her pretty air of self-forgetfulness and absorption -in others, the manner that was all Mary’s, as if she were an anxiously -motherly old lady and, at the same time, a childishly innocent young -girl. - -“You were gone a long time; was it a nice visit?” she asked. - -“Great!” cried Mark, in a tone that left no doubt of his sincerity. -“Such a collection as Mr. Moulton has made! I never saw plants pressed -and preserved like his. He says he has discovered a trifling secret, -but a big one, that makes his specimens less brittle. And his book is -all right, too! He is writing from a new angle. I don’t see how he -will ever finish it. Maybe some younger man will carry it on. That’s -what he said. He said he’d be relieved to know there was some one to -keep on with it if he dropped out, some one who understood his ideas -thoroughly. It would mean a lot to fit one’s self to carry on this -really great book, but maybe if I did my best----” Mark left his -sentence unfinished. - -Mary caught at its meaning eagerly. “Then Mr. Moulton does want you to -help him?” she cried. “You did get on well with him?” - -Mark grinned, with a boyishly sheepish look of satisfaction. “As to -that, he was awfully nice and kind, in a gruff way that I liked--after -I caught on to his methods. And I got so wound up over his specimens -and the book plans that--well, I guess he saw I wasn’t faking it, for -he thawed right out. He’s going to take me on as a--I don’t know what -you would call it--amanuensis, or secretary, but, thank goodness, it’s -more than that, because I’m to help with the work, if I know enough; -not merely copy and put notes in order.” - -Mary laughed delightedly, clasping her hands before her in an ecstatic -little way that she had, as if she were congratulating herself on being -glad. - -“You look like another boy!” she cried. “Isn’t it fine? I’m almost as -glad as you are! Mr. Moulton is a dear, the dearest of dears, but he -has to be found out--like gold and jewels! And his wife is another -dear. I know you will be happy, and the greatest comfort to Mr. -Moulton; he’s been longing for a helper. Isn’t it fine!” - -“You girls and your unc--and Win did it. Florimel made me come home -with her, and you’ve all been great to me! I’m awfully grateful, -though I can’t say so as I want to, Miss Gard--well, then, Mary!” Mark -corrected himself, as Mary shook her head at his relapse into forbidden -formality. “But ‘Miss Guard’ suits you to a T! I’m not sure I shan’t -call you Miss Guard; you certainly mother this house, if you _are_ -younger than I am.” - -“She smothers the house,” Jane corrected him, entering that moment. But -she swung Mary off her feet in a rapid hug to illustrate her actual -meaning. - -“What’s happened?” cried Florimel, dashing in from the garden. Chum -bounded after her; she had lost every remnant of doubt as to the -sort of home she had found; indeed her manner conveyed that she had -owned the house first and had kindly allowed the Gardens to use it. -Florimel’s skirt was torn and she and Chum left loam tracks wherever -they stepped, which seemed to be everywhere. But Chum’s expression -was so foolishly blissful, and Florimel’s brilliant beauty was so -irresistible, that Mary stifled her impulse to protest and beamed on -the youngest Garden and the dog, inwardly resolving to repair damages -before busy Abbie could see them. - -“What’d he say?” panted Florimel, jumping up and down in front of Mark, -whose success or failure she considered her own particular affair. - -“He said we’d have a trying time, Florimel,” replied Mark, laughing -at her. “He’d try me and I’d try him, and if the trial proved me -competent, he’d take me into his tent and be content; but if trying me -proved too trying he’d not try to try me any longer!” - -“For pity’s sake!” cried Florimel, shaking Mark’s arm. “My head feels -like a snarl of wool! What do you mean, anyhow? What did Mr. Moulton -say, Mary?” - -“Mark is going to help him, Mel,” said Mary. “I’m sure it is going to -be the best thing that ever happened; I’m as happy as I can be about -it. Did you know you had torn your skirt, dear? And it’s a new one.” - -“I rolled over on it, Mary, too tight--I mean the skirt was pulled down -under me tight when I fell over. I was sitting on my heels, weeding. -And Chum thought it was a joke and ran over to bite and yank me, so -I kicked out, quite hard, I suppose, because I heard that tearing, -crashing sound that you read about in stories of ships striking -icebergs, and when I looked----” Florimel ended her account of the -disaster with a dramatic gesture downward. - -“Make her mend it herself, Mary, and then wear it; she tears -everything, and you mend and mend for her, and never scold her!” said -Jane, frowning because Mary smiled when she should have frowned at -careless Florimel. - -“Certainly I shall mend it!” said Florimel, who had never been known -to repair anything she had torn. “When I went with you to call on your -friend, Miss Aldine, Jane, I decided to begin to mend the very first -time anything happened to me! Then if Mary were sick I could mend for -you, when you went on the stage, if that sloppy lot were the way you’d -have to be. It was what Mrs. Moulton calls an object lesson to me.” - -Jane coloured with annoyance over this allusion, but could not help -laughing at the look Florimel gave her out of her dancing black eyes, -her rosy face pulled down to severity as she spoke. - -“It’s a precious good thing I let you go with me, Miss, if it was an -object lesson and makes you spare poor Mary some of your mending,” she -retorted. “There’s the telephone; I’ll answer it.” - -At the end of the hall Jane took down the receiver and they heard her -say: “Yes. No, it’s Jane. Oh, Mr. Moulton, I didn’t know your voice. -How funny it sounds. Have you a cold? That’s good, but your voice -sounds husky and queer, as if it didn’t work right. Yes, sir; we’re -all here. You’ll be over in about an hour? All right, Mr. Moulton; -good-bye. They’re coming over, Mr. and Mrs. Moulton,” Jane said, -rejoining her sisters. “He says he has something most important and -unexpected to tell us. He sounded so queer! If it had been one of us -I’d have said he was excited.” - -“No, you wouldn’t,” observed Mark. “You’d say _she_ was excited.” - -“Oh, dear me,” sighed Jane. “Nothing worse than fussy people! Maybe -I wouldn’t; maybe Win would have been home, or you here, and I’d -still have said he. Coming with me to get ready to see the Moultons, -Marygold? They’ll be here so late we shall have to get dressed for -supper before they come.” - -“Yes. Florimel, if Mrs. Moulton saw you wearing that torn skirt I don’t -know what might happen to her,” said Mary, joining Jane at the foot of -the stairs. - -“She’ll see me wearing a whole skirt. Wait till I put Chum out,” said -Florimel. - -Mary and Jane did not take Florimel’s “wait” literally. They knew that -putting Chum out could hardly be called putting--it involved long -coaxing and wiles, and feigned enthusiasm and excitement over a cat in -the garden, which had no existence there or elsewhere. So the two older -girls went on up to their rooms, leaving Florimel to the persuasion of -Chum. - -“What do you say it is?” asked Jane a little later, standing in Mary’s -chamber door, her radiant hair falling over her white skirt and flying -around her face in a glory to which Mary never became thoroughly -accustomed. Jane was drying her face as she spoke; she never could be -kept in the proper spot long enough to finish any part of her toilet. -Mary was bent over, combing up the heavy masses of her own soft brown -hair. She looked up from under it at Jane’s reflection in the mirror. - -“What do I suppose _what_ is?” Mary asked. - -“What Mr. Moulton has to tell us, of course,” said Jane. “I’ve been -thinking. He’s our guardian, you know, so I think it’s one of two -things: Either we are a great deal poorer than we are supposed to -be, or a great deal richer. His voice certainly sounded excited; -the more I think of it the surer I am that Mr. Moulton’s voice was -queer. When guardians in books have anything to tell their wards it -is something about money, so I suppose we’re beggared, or else----” - -“We’re not!” Mary ended Jane’s sentence for her with a laugh. “Just -like the effect of the White Knight’s poem, which either brought tears -to your eyes or it didn’t! Janie, you’re the greatest goose--for a -duck! You’re precisely like the heathen imagining vain things! Mr. -Moulton probably wants to talk about naming a plant for one of us; he’s -been talking about that ever since he began experimenting with those -hybrids of his, which are going to produce a new flower.” - -“You’ll see!” said Jane, throwing out her hair and running her fingers -through it till it crackled and followed them, standing out around her. - -“Jane,” protested Mary, “go away! You make me think of the burning -bush and ‘the pillar of fire by night,’ till I feel quite wicked and -irreverent.” - -Instead of going away Jane came over and kissed Mary in the hollow of -the back of her neck: “If I could make you feel wicked, you old lump of -goodness, you, I’d follow you around every minute. ’Tisn’t fair that -Mel and I have all the Garden badness--all the weediness,” she declared. - -Just as Mary and Jane ran downstairs, both fresh and lovely in pale -lawns, Win came in at the front door. - -“What’s up?” he asked at once. “Mr. Moulton telephoned the office for -me to be home early, that he was coming here to tell us all something, -and would like me to be here, if I could be. What’s up?” - -“We don’t know,” began Mary, slightly disturbed, feeling that this must -portend more than the naming of a new hybrid. Jane took the words out -of her mouth. “We don’t know,” she said, “but I’m sure that we have had -a lot of money come somehow, or else we’re so poor, everything swept -away, that we’ve got to be cash girls, at four dollars a week.” - -“Too much,” said Win, shaking his head. “Red-haired girls at -three-fifty; that’s the rule.” - -“They’re coming, anyway, Mr. and Mrs. Moulton are coming,” Florimel -called over the banisters as she hurriedly buttoned her waist in the -back and pulled it down into place after she had done this. “We’ll soon -know what it is. Mother was English, wasn’t she? Maybe we’re earls, I -mean dukes, duchesses--oh, noble!” - -“We are noble, Mel,” said Win gravely; “very noble. If we weren’t -noble, my dear, we should long ago have dealt with you as you deserve.” - -Mark was nowhere to be seen, though he was staying this second night in -Hollyhock House, having arranged to begin his service to Mr. Moulton on -the next day. - -“He’s a nice boy to take himself off, but Mr. Moulton can’t have -anything to say that any one might not hear,” said Win, going out to -meet the visitors. Yet when Win came back, stepping aside to allow the -girls’ guardian to precede him into the house, there was an instant -perception of something out of the ordinary on the part of the three -Garden girls. It was so strong that it was as if they had not thought -of it before; Mr. Moulton’s face was quite red, his manner distinctly -nervous, and his wife looked greatly disturbed. Mary found it difficult -to greet them, while Jane, who was like an electrical wire in receiving -impressions, turned pale and put out her hand to her old friends -without speaking. - -“My dears,” Mr. Moulton began, having cleared his throat portentously, -“I have an extraordinary announcement to make to you; nothing bad, so -don’t be frightened, but it will certainly amaze you. I don’t know how -to begin. Do you know your mother’s name?” - -“There!” exclaimed Florimel involuntarily. “Jane said it was money, but -I knew it was the nobility!” - -“Lynette Devon, wasn’t it, Mr. Moulton?” said Mary, with a reproving -glance at Florimel. - -“Lynette Devon was her maiden name,” assented Mr. Moulton, glancing at -his wife, who sat nervously on the edge of her chair, as if prepared to -render any sort of aid to any one instantly. “You never heard of the -manner nor time of her death, did you?” Mr. Moulton went on. “No!” he -added as the three girls shook their heads and Mary clasped her hands -quickly and gasped: “Oh, Mr. Moulton!” - -“No, you never did. The impression that she was dead has been -intentionally given you, because it was the kindest thing to do to keep -you from worrying and longing to get in touch with her. But, my dears, -your mother is not dead.” - -The three girls sat in utter silence for a few moments after this -announcement. Mary, white to the lips, clasped and unclasped her -hands, looking imploringly at Mr. Moulton with her lovely brown eyes -as prayerful as a dog’s. Florimel seemed dazed, and Jane, alarmingly -white and thin looking--Jane had a trick of looking thin under -emotion--suddenly dropped over on the arm of her chair and shook with -dry sobs. Win sat silent, looking rather stern. - -“We do not understand,” Mary managed to whisper at last. - -“Win remembers her; he was eleven years old when she went away.” Mr. -Moulton halted again over the beginning of his story. - -“He never talked about her to us,” said Mary reproachfully. - -“I know,” assented Mr. Moulton, watching his wife as she vainly tried -to calm Jane, and finally went quietly to find Anne Kennington and -ask for aromatic ammonia. “Win had a boy’s resentment against his -sister-in-law for leaving you, and for leaving him, also. He was fond -of her and bitterly resented her ‘deserting you,’ as he called it. -I used to try to reconcile Win and teach him to judge Mrs. Garden -gently, but he was too young to learn charity. He helped me to keep -from you younger children the fact that she was alive--which he has -not suspected, I know--by believing that she had died, and asking no -questions.” Mr. Moulton smiled at the bewildered young man, who was not -less stunned than the girls by this information. “Jane, my dear, try to -control yourself. There is nothing about finding one’s mother alive to -cry over, and I want you to hear what I say,” said Mr. Moulton, with -better effect on Jane’s nerves than his wife’s prescription. Jane stood -in awe of her guardian. - -“Your mother, my dears, was married young. It was not so young that -she had not tasted the delight of holding an audience by her charming -voice--she sang like the linnet she was called--and by her remarkable -talent for mimicry. She was the best mimic I ever heard; she could -burlesque anybody, and imitate almost any sound. She was a great -pet with audiences over in England, when she married an American, -considerably her elder--your father and my friend. He took her away -from her audiences and her country and set her down in the old Garden -house amid the old Garden garden. Here you, her three babies, were -born in four years. I knew Lynette as well as a sober codger like me -could know such a radiant creature, but I never knew whether or not -she longed for her professional life. Then, your father dead, Florimel -a baby of a year, she suddenly announced that she could bear it no -longer, but must return to her singing and entertaining. I was your -guardian, children; Anne was devotion to you incarnate; your mother -knew that she was leaving her babies to absolute safety, better care -than most mothered babies get. Of course no one else can understand how -the old life could call her with half the force your baby voices would -have to hold her. Mrs. Moulton has never understood it.” Mr. Moulton -glanced at his wife, who looked grimly at him in return. “I don’t -understand it myself, but Lynette Devon loved her old life and she was -unable to resist its lure. She went back, and all these past twelve -years, while you have thought her dead, she has been entrancing the -English public, quite as great a success as before her marriage.” - -Mary looked at her guardian, her eyes so full of appeal that he paused. - -“What is it, Mary, dear?” he asked. - -“Nobody has been blaming our mother all this time, have they? She -is----” Mary could not frame her question. - -“She is an artist, Mary, and everything she does is worth doing, if -that is what you would like to ask,” Mr. Moulton assured her. “She -sings good music and does clever entertaining; every one praises her. -She is a child and an artist; she could not be domestic, and, as long -as her babies were comfortable and safe, she saw no reason why she -should deny her nature and stay here. We cannot understand that----” - -“Yes, I can!” Jane interrupted him to cry. “I couldn’t leave an -animal to suffer, but I can see why she had to go back. Isn’t it -_wonderful_, Mary?” - -“Ah, but, Jane, here’s the hard part of it!” said Mr. Moulton. “You -see her days of giving and getting joy in her own way were not long. -Lynette is only thirty-seven now, and, though that may sound decrepit -to you, it is young. And your mother’s voice is gone, her career -ended. She caught a severe cold, was seriously ill for some months this -last winter, and when she recovered it was but a partial recovery--her -beautiful voice was completely gone. So now she is laid on the shelf. -She wrote to me----” - -“She wants to come home!” cried Mary, starting to her feet, and Jane -and Florimel were on theirs as quickly. - -“Sit down, children; she is not outside,” smiled Mr. Moulton. “She -wrote me that ‘if her little girls were not angry with her for having -cast them off for her career, if they would receive her, now that -her career was ended and she had nothing but them to turn to, she -would like to come here.’ She added that she realized that it had a -contemptible look to turn to her children only when nothing else was -left, but she wanted them now, and hoped that they would forgive her. -She also said, quite simply and, I think, sincerely, that she ‘had to -go.’” - -“When will she get here?” cried Mary, still clasping and unclasping her -hands, still white to the lips. - -“Will any one have to go to get her?” demanded Jane. “I’ll go.” - -“Oh, say, couldn’t she take an airship and _hurry_?” burst out -Florimel, her face crimson with impatient excitement. - -“If she needs an escort over, I could start Saturday, if they’d give me -two weeks out of the office now, instead of a summer vacation,” added -Win. - -“She will come with her maid, if you invite her,” said Mr. Moulton. -“She is not poor; Mrs. Garden is really rather a wealthy woman, I -imagine. It is not because she needs support that she wants to come.” - -“Of course not; she needs us, her daughters!” cried Mary. - -“And we need her, if only to pet,” Jane supplemented her. - -“I am bound to tell you one thing, my dears,” said Mr. Moulton. “You -are free to do precisely as you wish in the matter. There were some of -us who would not accept the responsibility for you--myself and some of -the Gardens--unless we were to have it completely. When your mother -went back to England, leaving you here, Florimel still a baby, you -know, she signed an agreement to relinquish all claim upon you and upon -this estate. She has no legal claim upon you. I am bound to tell you -that.” - -“As though one remembered law about one’s mother!” cried Jane, losing -all hold on words. - -“’Specially when she’s lost her voice and needs us,” said Florimel. - -“She could not alter things with pen and ink, Mr. Moulton,” said sweet -Mary. And Mr. Moulton drew her to him and kissed her. - -“Such true little girls!” he said. “What’s a voice and the public to -lose if the loss gains you three?” - - - - -CHAPTER FIVE - -“SWEET AS ENGLISH AIR COULD MAKE HER” - - -It was long before the Garden household settled down to sleep that -night. - -The girls had walked with Mr. and Mrs. Moulton part of the distance -toward their home. In answer to Florimel’s question, Mr. Moulton had -said that he was sure that Mrs. Garden would be established at home in -less than a month. When Jane pressed him for a right to hope for her -coming in less time, he admitted that it was quite possible that she -would be in Vineclad within three weeks, as he meant to write to her -that night. - -“And tell her not to bring a maid, not unless she thinks she can’t -possibly get on without her. We want to be her maids; please tell her -that, Mr. Moulton,” Jane implored him. - -“Very well, Jane. Your mother has undoubtedly been accustomed to a -great deal of waiting upon; remember that you children may not have -much leisure this summer for your outdoor pleasures if you do not let -your mother have her maid,” Mr. Moulton suggested. - -“Of course we can find one here, later,” said Mrs. Moulton, seeing the -protest in the three pairs of eyes turned upon them. - -“And if you had a mother indoors, one you thought was dead, you -wouldn’t want to go out at all, would you?” cried Florimel. - -“That’s what we all feel,” said Mary. - -“Why, since I’ve heard she was alive, and I’ve got so I could think -of it, I’m just _hovering_ over my mother!” cried Jane. “It’s as -though my mind fluttered over her, the way birds flutter over their -nests; it can’t get away.” - -“It’s curious, isn’t it, when we were so happy before and loved one -another almost more than any other three sisters ever did, that the -moment you said our mother was alive it was as if all our life backward -looked empty? We all three knew in an instant that we needed something -terribly,” Mary said thoughtfully. - -Mrs. Moulton glanced at her husband. “Be prepared, my dears, for not -finding your mother quite like the mothers you know in Vineclad,” she -said. “She has had slight experience in motherhood, and she has been -the pet of a large public. It is quite possible that you may be called -upon to mother her, rather than find her knowing how to mother you. But -you are all three capable of this, each in her way.” - -Then Jane replied with one of her flashing intuitions: “We’ll mother -her until she learns how to have daughters.” - -The three Garden girls turned back at this point, after Mary had -received from Mr. Moulton instructions for sending Mark Walpole to him -in the morning, and Mrs. Moulton had listened, with her quietly amused -smile, to Mary’s hints of her discoveries in regard to Mark’s tastes. - -“Win and I think he needs watching; he gets into day dreams and doesn’t -look after himself very well,” Mary ended. And the girls bade the -Moultons good-bye and turned toward home. - -“Such a born little mother as sweet Mary is,” said Mrs. Moulton warmly, -as she and her husband watched the slender figures running toward -home like swift Atalantas. “Such a wonderfully beautiful, clever, and -lovable trio! What daughters for a real mother to return to! And I have -none.” - -“Now, Althea, those children are almost your own,” said her husband -hastily, for he never wanted his wife to remember that their one -little daughter had lived but a few months. “And perhaps Lynette Garden -will appreciate them. Twelve years is a long time. Lynette was no older -than Win is now when she went away; she must have changed.” - -“She was a pretty little Angora kitten,” said Mrs. Moulton, walking on. -And her husband knew that Mrs. Garden’s defence must be left to herself -when she came. Mary, Jane, and Florimel ran into the house and up the -stairs to the sewing-room, calling: “Anne, Anne!” as they came. - -Anne opened the door to them. They saw at a glance that she was idle, -an almost unprecedented discovery, and her face was darkly flushed and -swollen with tears. - -“You know!” cried Mary, throwing herself into Anne’s open arms. - -“Win told me,” said Anne, holding Mary, dearest to her of the sisters, -if she had a preference. “I have always wondered how this day would -come, and when.” - -“You knew our mother was alive, and never told us!” cried Jane. - -“Janie, I’ve written her at odd times, telling her how you got on; she -asked me to when she went away. What was the use of telling you she -was alive? You could not have been with her, and you would have fretted -after her. You might have come not to love her if you were wanting -her and could not get her to come to you, nor take you there. It was -better to let you grow up contented; Mr. and Mrs. Moulton were strict -in requiring me to keep still. But I always knew this day would come. -She’ll be here soon, my little lady, and what a happy time it will be!” -Anne poured out her words with profound emotion. - -“Oh, Anne, yes! What a happy time it will be! What a happy time it is!” -cried Mary. “We shall have all we can do to get ready for her. Do you -think the house has to be repapered? Do we have to get new furniture, -do you think? And what room shall she have?” - -“You know, Mary, the big south room was the room she used to have,” -said Anne. “That is why I kept it for a guest-room: I thought she’d be -back one of these days and it would be best for her to slip into her -old place. You three babies were born in that room and there she used -to rock you, the short time that she had you to rock. Florimel she -enjoyed but a year. I can see her this minute with that black-haired -midget in her arms, and you and Jane playing beside her; Florimel’s -hair was black and plenty from the first! The small room off it was her -dressing-room.” - -“You’ve often told us, Anne,” said Jane. “Do you think it needs doing -over?” - -“I’d rather the old furniture was there for her to see,” said Anne. -“Of course the paper she had is gone and what’s there is faded. I’ve a -piece of her wall paper in the garret. Why not send it to one of the -big dealers in New York and see how near he can come to matching it? I -believe the nearer like the way she found her room when the doctor had -it ready for her, and brought her to it, only three years older than -her oldest girl is now, the more like that she finds it now the less -she’ll feel that you three tall creatures are not the babies she left -behind her.” - -“Oh, dear; I’m so sorry we are so near grown up!” sighed Mary. - -“But she did leave us, and stayed twelve years. She can’t expect to -find us just learning to walk!” exclaimed Florimel, who was more -inclined to remember that this fabulous mother had gone away from her -children than was either of the others. - -The next morning Mark went to begin his labours with Mr. Moulton. The -Garden girls were so interested in his installation that this would -have been an absorbing event had it not been that Jane was in the -library, occupied with wrapping and addressing a large strip of the -paper which had been on her mother’s room when she came to it, a bride, -and Mary and Florimel were upstairs turning the room topsy-turvy, -deciding what changes to make in its furnishing. - -“We’re going to keep this low rocker because our mother held us in it -when we were babies,” Mary announced when Mark came upstairs to look -for her and say good-bye. “Don’t you think it would be fine to have the -chairs cushioned with a very good chintz, to harmonize with the wall -paper? Do you like that table exactly? Are you really going now to Mr. -Moulton, Mark? Of course you are; I’m dazed. Please don’t mind. No, we -won’t say good-bye here; we’re going down to see you out of the door, -though of course you will come through it nearly every day this summer. -But we must see you go to seek your fortune, and wish you luck. I’ve -waked up at last! When you came upstairs I couldn’t seem to understand -why you came, or anything!” - -“I know; you looked right through me, all the way across the ocean to -England,” laughed Mark. “I didn’t know you could talk so fast, Mary! I -don’t mind your forgetting me. It’s a big thing that’s happened to you, -and I’m a good deal stirred up, myself, to think you’ve found out your -mother’s alive and is coming back. I know how I’d feel if I could hear -my mother hadn’t died, though I never knew my mother, either. But I -knew my father; we were chums.” - -“What a nice boy you are, Mark Walpole!” said Mary, frankly holding -out her hand. “This is another bit of luck this spring! I’m glad we’ve -found you for a friend.” - -“_We_’ve found him! H’m!” said Florimel, with a withering scorn -that might have withered more effectually if her face had been less -dusty from rubbing it with hands that had been pushing against backs of -pieces of furniture. “I guess no one found him but me--in the bulrushes -down in town! I wish your name was Moses, Mark; it would be so funny -and fitting.” - -“I believe I’d just as lief have a name that isn’t so close a fit to -that one incident, Florimel. Maybe Mark will fit something else that -happens to me; it sounds like a name that could come in pat,” said -Mark. - -“Of course!” cried Florimel. “You’ll discover some old weed, or -something, in botany, and make your mark! But I’d love to call you -Moses.” - -“You may, Pharaoh’s daughter. I don’t mind. But I can’t crave to be -called that by every one,” said Mark, and turned back at the foot of -the stairs to put out his hand to Mary. “Even if I am going to see -you again this evening, and nearly every day, I believe the time to -thank you is when I start out on my own hook. I can’t do it,” he said. -“You’ve been no end good to me, and if I didn’t know that so well, I -could say it better.” - -“Please never say it nor think it,” said Mary. “You came along and the -rest of it followed you. It did itself. I love to believe everything -flows along, like little waves, one after another!--planned for us, you -know.” - -“Good-bye, Mary Garden. I’d like any plan that had you in it,” said -Mark hurriedly, as if he hated to say it. - -“Mark is nice; he’s gone, Jane,” said Mary, coming in to where Jane was -busily writing the wall paper firm about the paper. - -“Where has he gone?” asked Jane absently, and they both laughed. “You -can’t expect me to remember such a little thing as Mark’s going when -our mother is coming,” Jane added. “He’ll be here every spare minute, -anyway.” - -For two weeks Hollyhock House spun out of all likeness to its calm -self. The New York dealer had furnished a paper for the south bedroom -that differed only in a small detail from the sample which Jane had -mailed him. Paper hangers, painters, and upholsterers worked steadily -to restore the room to the appearance it had worn eighteen years -before. The odour of paint dominated the early June odours, which -crept in from the garden, and the bustle, untidiness, and confusion of -workmen in the house left little time or thought for the loveliness -which, this year, as in all years, the beautiful garden offered its -young owners. - -But at last the south chamber was done. It shone in the whiteness of -its new paint, and blossomed, a rival to the garden, in its new wall -paper, with apple blossoms rioting everywhere between its floor and -ceiling. The low rocker in which, seventeen years ago, the girl mother -had stilled her first baby, Mary, was covered in a chintz of browns and -greens and pinks, repeated on the seats of the other chairs. Delicate -curtains of point d’esprit fluttered from beneath the same shades in -raw silk outer curtains. Mary had worked steadily, and Jane had helped -her, to hemstitch new dresser and table covers of the finest linen, not -because there was not already a store of such things in the house, but -because they were eager to prepare with their own fingers these special -belongings for their mother’s room. When everything was done there -followed five long-drawn days of waiting. Mr. Moulton had received a -cablegram that Mrs. Garden had sailed. She had asked the children not -to meet her. Mr. Moulton went alone to New York to be there when she -arrived and to bring her home. - -Waiting had been hard from the moment that the accomplishment of the -work in the house left nothing more to be done, except to wait. After -Mr. Moulton had gone it became unbearable. - -“Suppose she missed the boat!” said Florimel, wriggling about in her -chair on the piazza. - -Mary and Jane laughed, but Jane said: “To tell the truth, I can’t help -being scared to death for fear there’s been a collision and the ship’s -sunk.” - -“We’d hear that at once,” said Mary. “What I’ve been thinking is that -she might have been taken ill and died on the way over.” - -“Well, girls!” remonstrated Win. “I’d never have believed you’d have -been breaking your necks to cross a bridge you hadn’t come to like -this! It isn’t like you to imagine such catastrophes.” - -“We never had a mother coming home before,” Florimel reminded him. “We -never had a mother anywhere,” added Jane. “It doesn’t seem possible we -can have one.” - -“If she doesn’t get in to-morrow, the ship will be overdue; to-morrow’s -the latest date for her. When ships are overdue, there’s always -something wrong, isn’t there, Win?” asked Mary apprehensively. - -“There’s always something wrong with people who worry, when worry is -not due, Molly darling,” Win reminded her. He had been thinking for -a moment or two that he saw a carriage appear and disappear down the -road, revealed and concealed by its turns. Now it came into sight, -approaching. - -“Oh, Mary--Win!” gasped Jane, springing out of the hammock where she -had been lying, so pale that Mary was forced to notice it in the midst -of her answering excitement. - -“Steady, kids!” murmured Win sympathetically, as the carriage stopped -at the gate. - -Florimel uttered a queer cry and bolted into the house. Mary, as white -as Jane, moved forward as if in a dream, and Jane followed her; Win -brought up the rear. A lady got out of the carriage; neither girl saw -her clearly. They received an impression of an elusive perfume, soft -fabrics, a vivid, tender face, and arms encircling them in turn; while -a voice, most lovely in tone and quality, as soft and hauntingly sweet -as the fabrics and the fragrance, said with an English accent: - -“Oh, not really! I’m going back! Not such tall, tall girls my -daughters! You make an old woman of me on the instant! Where’s the -other one? I know Jane by her hair; so you are Mary. And Win! Grown -up--but you are older than the girls; that’s a comfort. Oh, my dears, -I’m so tired! Do you think you can give me tea? I still feel that -wretched boat tossing; we had a rough crossing. Have you my veil, Mr. -Moulton? Ah, yes; thanks. Fancy your being so grown and so pretty, -children! Thank goodness, you’re decidedly pretty, though too pale. I -wonder why America bleaches its girls?” - -“Our girls are as rosy as you could ask, Mrs. Garden,” Mr. Moulton came -to the rescue as Mrs. Garden’s lovely voice ceased; neither Mary nor -Jane had spoken. “They are overwhelmed by seeing you. I told you what -it meant to them to have you return to them from the dead--as they -thought.” - -“Naturally!” said Mrs. Garden, pressing the arm that happened to be -nearest to her--Jane’s. “And fancy what it means to me to see you -again, my dears! I should have written you, but your guardian and Anne -Kennington forbade me. They thought it would make you quite too unhappy -to be separated from me, knowing me alive. I dare say they were right. -I positively could not have you with me, going about as I did. Oh, -children, pity your little mother! Her voice is gone!” - -“Indeed we are sorry, mother, darling,” said Mary, finding her own -voice in response to the appeal in her mother’s. “But we can’t be as -sorry as we would like to be because its going meant your coming--home.” - -“That’s a nice little speech, Mary,” said her mother. “I’m glad you -know how to say pretty things. It’s a great gift for a woman to say the -right thing at the right moment.” - -“Mary does not make pretty speeches, Mrs. Garden. She says the right -thing because she feels the right way,” said Win, flushing. - -“How nice! She looks like a darling girl; she’s quite as sweet looking -as she is pretty,” said Mrs. Garden, as though Mary were not there. -“But, Win, _Mrs. Garden_? Aren’t you half-brother-in-law to me? -Why not Lynette?” - -“Yes,” said embarrassed Win. “That’s so!” - -By this time they had come up the path and entered the house. At the -door stood Anne, tears streaming down her face. - -Mrs. Garden flew to her. “You dear creature!” she cried. “How glad I am -to find you waiting for me, exactly where I said good-bye to you twelve -years ago! And the house looks just the same! How strange, when one has -been living so eagerly as I have, to come back and find a place looking -as though a day had hardly gone by since one left it! But the children -spoil that effect! Dear me, Anne, why have they grown to be almost -young women? It’s dismaying. Where is the baby, Florimel? The one I -named, and who has the only pretty name among them, in consequence? She -could not walk when I left her; can’t she walk now, and come to welcome -me?” - -“Mel! Florimel, come!” called Jane up the stairs, as Florimel emerged, -as pale as her sisters, from the folds of a portière. - -“Oh, you charming gypsy!” cried her mother, taking her into her arms. -“You had this same raven hair when we first met, and you were an hour -old. You are nearly as tall as Mary, and you are both as tall as if -I were decrepit! Isn’t it horrible? And at home in England I’ve been -singing under my maiden name, and quite felt, and was treated, like a -young Miss Lynette Devon! Never mind, my sweethearts, I’ve come back to -be an old woman, and to let you take care of me.” - -“You’ll never be an old woman, and we’ll take care of you so -that you’ll feel like a whole orphan asylum!” cried Florimel, -characteristically able to express what Mary and Jane felt too deeply -to utter. - -“You dear funny child! Is there tea, Anne? I’m half dead from fatigue. -And send a maid out to fetch my portmanteau, will you? My luggage will -be here to-morrow, but I want to go right to my room, and get into a -loose gown I’ve kept with me, just as soon as I’ve had tea,” said Mrs. -Garden. - -“Win has brought your bag in, mother: I slipped out to see,” said Mary. -“He’s taken it to your room. Abbie is bringing you tea and a cracker -and some crisp lettuce out of the garden.” - -“Is that fine garden as good as ever? A _cracker_, my American -daughter? We say biscuit at home. But what a dear little caretaking -creature you are! I did not like your name; I was awfully vexed that -the doctor insisted on calling you after one of the Gardens--his aunt, -wasn’t it? I was going to name you Elaine; then we both should have -been called out of the Idyls of the King, you know. But it turned out -quite right; you’re a genuine English Mary, sweet, old-fashioned kind. -And my pretty Jane--do you know that lovely old tenor song? Jane would -have been Gwendoline if I’d had my way, but she got called after her -grandmother. I had my way with Florimel, and none other! However, Jane -is so brilliant and clever looking that Jane is rather nice for her; -the plain name emphasizes her. Ah, thank you--Abbie, did you say, Mary? -Thank you, Abbie. I’m half dead, and the tea smells perfect.” Mrs. -Garden accepted the cup which Mary poured for her, and the lettuce -that Jane eagerly served her, also the “biscuit” that Florimel passed. -The three girls hovered around her, silent but alert, their pallor now -giving way to a flooding colour which enhanced the beauty of their -sparkling eyes. - -“My word!” said their mother, looking from one to the other as she -sipped her tea. “Am I really your mother, my three tall princesses?” - -Anne stood gloating over her lady, whose absence she had ceaselessly -mourned. Mrs. Garden’s children had recovered enough by this time to -see that she was exceedingly slender, with a willowy grace of motion -that gave her five feet two of height the effect of more inches. Her -face was long and thin, delicately formed. Jane was more like her than -either of the others, though in expression, as in colouring, they were -unlike. Mrs. Garden’s hair was a light brown, her eyes were blue, her -nose as pretty as possible, straight and fine. Her mouth was small and -pretty in shape as in expression. Though she never could have been as -lovely as Mary, for she lacked Mary’s earnest eyes and the reposeful -strength which supplemented her prettiness; though Jane and Florimel -both far outshone her in beauty, yet Mrs. Garden must have been at -their age a remarkably pretty girl, with a childish appeal, and a -little manner that demanded and inspired service from all of her world. -To her children she looked older than they had expected to see her, -for to the years below twenty the lines which nearly forty years must -engrave suggest age. But in reality she was wonderfully young looking -for her age, with a faded look of childhood upon her, as if she were a -little girl that some one had veiled unsuitably, and who was overtired. -It was easy to understand that she had attracted people to her all her -life. The girls, watching her, began to feel her charm, and to throb -with rapid heartbeats, feeling it. - -“Now I really must go to my room, children,” she announced, rising at -last. “I’m quite refreshed; the tea was excellent, my good Abbie. Where -is Mr. Moulton? I never said a word to him when I got here! How rude -of me! Yet how can one remember one’s manners, meeting her three big -girls, whom she last saw babies?” - -“Mr. Moulton found Mark coming after him, and went home with him,” -Anne explained. “He bade me tell you, Mrs. Garden, that he begged to -be excused from wearying you further to-night; that he hoped you would -find yourself rested to-morrow, and that he and Mrs. Moulton would come -to ask after you in the afternoon.” - -“That’s very nice of him, Anne; he seems to be nicer than I remembered -him. He bored me when I was a girl here, but the doctor adored him. -Are you going to take your mother up, my trio?” asked Mrs. Garden. - -Mary, Jane, and Florimel eagerly crowded around her to escort her -upstairs. Mary, remembering that Anne loved her no less, and knew her -far better, than her own children, turned back and invited Anne to -come, too, with her outstretched hand. - -“What a pity I’m not a triangle!” said Mrs. Garden, as her three girls -tried to find a place next to her simultaneously. “And my room! Quite -unchanged! That’s never the same paper, Anne? Yet I’m sure it is! How -extraordinary!” - -“We tried to match it, mother; Anne had kept a piece of the old paper,” -Jane explained. “Do you think you will like it?” - -“I think I shall like you!” cried Mrs. Garden, taking the face of each -of her girls in turn between her cool palms and kissing their foreheads. - -Jane dashed away and, when Mary and Florimel followed her more slowly, -they found her tempestuously crying for joy among the pillows on her -bed, her small feet waving emotionally. She sat up when her sisters -entered. - -“She’s so pretty, and has such ways, and we’re not orphans any longer!” -she gasped. - - - - -CHAPTER SIX - -“SOMETHING BETWEEN A HINDRANCE AND A HELP” - - -Mary Garden woke with a start the next morning. Her room was filled -with the beautiful light that preceded the sun on a mid-June morning, -when the days are longest. She could not recall for a bewildered -instant what it was that made her feel such a sense of great -possession, such flooding joy. Then the chorussing birds in the garden -below aroused her more fully, and she knew! - -“The first day!” she thought, sinking back into the pillows, and into -the birdsong and translucent air, feeling that all beauty flowed around -her and held her up, that she lay on great joy-filled hands which at -once gave to her and sustained her. - -It was not yet four o’clock, so Mary gave herself up for a delicious -half-hour to turning over the wealth that had come to her; she felt -as one might whose hands were dripping with unset gems of the purest -water. It all lay before her--the setting, and learning, and enjoying -of this strange gift. In that brief time which she had spent with her -mother on her arrival Mary had seen that nothing which they knew of -ordinary mothers would help the Garden girls to acquaintance with their -own, neither in teaching them their duty toward her nor in enjoying -her. As she lay in thought, gradually Mary’s ecstasy in waking merged -into a graver sense of responsibility that reversed the relationship -of this new mother and her eldest daughter. Mary recalled her mother’s -pretty mannerisms, spontaneous yet trained; her dainty appointments, -her dependence, her appeal, as of one who had been accustomed to homage -and must have it. - -“She has come home because she is cruelly wounded; we must remember -that every moment,” Mary thought, feeling her way. “She cared more for -her singing, her career, than for anything else--yes, _anything_ -else!” Mary repeated this to herself sternly. “We can’t mean much to -her yet; she doesn’t know us. She will miss her old life dreadfully. -She will feel wretched when she remembers that she cannot sing now. We -must keep her from thinking of it, but it will rush over her at times, -in spite of all that we can do. I wonder how girls like us can keep her -company, not let her get lonely, yet not bore her to death? Really, it -is going to be hard--we must do our best!” Mary rebuked her thought for -taking a form that might be interpreted to mean that the task would be -hard to the girls: _hard_, not merely difficult. “We shall have a -great deal to do!” And Mary sprang up and began to dress rapidly, as -if to be ready to do. This morning she had expected to be first in the -garden, but, early as it was, Jane was already there when she came down. - -“I couldn’t sleep, the birds sang so,” Jane explained. - -“And our hearts sang so, Janie,” Mary added. “That is what wakened me, -though I never heard the birds sing as they did this morning, nor saw -such a sunrise. Do listen to that catbird! He’s just like a little gray -lead pipe, pouring out liquid song! Do hear how it bubbles and ripples!” - -Jane tipped back her head till her long, delicate face was turned -skyward, and the mounting sun transformed her hair into a part of -himself, as if he were reflected in a golden shield. - -“You know you can almost touch heaven when you’re so happy, and when -you’re unhappy it seems too far away to be real. Yet some one is always -happy, and some one else unhappy. If we could remember that, do you -suppose heaven would always seem near?” Jane asked. - -“I don’t know; I suppose so, Janie. I’ve never been really unhappy, -never more than sad, or sorry when our pets die--though that’s bad -enough! We never had anything to bear that we ought to call sorrow. I’m -always happy,” said Mary. - -“I know you are!” cried Jane. “I’m not. It doesn’t need sorrow to -make me sorrowful. Sometimes I get up in the morning feeling as if I -couldn’t stand it; nothing special--just stand _it_! I get as -blue! Then sometimes I could dance on the top of the river, I’m so -light-hearted! This morning it doesn’t seem as though the blue day -could come. This is different; I know what I’m glad about now. It feels -all warm and lasting.” - -“I suppose--perhaps--we ought not to be unhappy over nothing,” said -Mary. - -“It’s my hair,” said Jane. “Everything is my hair! Mrs. Moulton -says ups and downs are part of ‘the red-haired temperament.’ Your -temperament has brown hair, Molly darling, so you’ll have to dye me, if -you want to make me nice and steady-good.” - -“I don’t want to make you anything that changes you, my Janie,” said -Mary. “And I didn’t mean to preach.” - -“Preach all you want to, Sister Maria Serena; I don’t mind preaching -when people practise, too,” said Jane, pirouetting on the extreme tips -of her toes. “I came out to see if I could find the prettiest rose that -ever bloomed for mother’s plate at breakfast. I don’t like any of them -exactly. Do you think she ought to have a red, or a pink, or a white -one, Mary?” - -“Pink,” said Mary instantly. “A long bud, just opening. One of us ought -to offer to help her dress; she’s used to a maid. Perhaps it would -better be you, Jane. You are cleverer with your fingers than I am.” - -“I think I’d be afraid,” said Jane, nervously, actually turning a -little pale from the thought of not performing her task satisfactorily. -“But I’d love to.” - -“Perhaps she wants to get up now, and is afraid of disturbing us,” -suggested Mary. “Shall we creep up to see if she is awake?” - -The two girls crept up the stairs and listened at their mother’s door. -Mary’s shoulder jarred the knob and Mrs. Garden called out: - -“Is some one there?” - -Softly, as if she had not spoken and might be asleep, Mary opened the -door barely enough to admit, first Jane, then herself. - -“Good morning, mother dear,” Mary said. “Have we kept you waiting? Did -you want to get up and go out in the garden before?” - -“Before!” cried Mrs. Garden. “Angels and ministers of grace defend -us! You out and out little American aborigine! It can’t be much after -five o’clock, and you ask me if I have wanted to go into the garden -_earlier_?” - -Mary looked so confused that Jane came to her rescue. “You see, mother, -we get up at this time in summer. It’s far lovelier in the garden now -even than at sunset, fresher, and the birds sing quite differently. -When we were little we used to play we were Adam and Eve, if we got up -in time; we called it our ‘new garden’ at this hour. We never thought -we could be Adam and Eve after breakfast.” - -“I’ve no doubt, Jane. In any case, Adam and Eve were not in the garden -after they had eaten. But you see I’ve no desire to play at Adam and -Eve! I’ve not the least doubt that the garden is charming at dawn--but -you see, my dears, the dawn is not charming; at least not as alluring -as my comfortable bed. This is a remarkably comfortable bed, by the -way. What time do you imagine I rise, girls?” asked Mrs. Garden. - -Mary shook her head. “It sounds as though you meant us to guess a -shocking hour, mother dear,” she said. - -“Not nearly as shocking as five o’clock, Mary dear,” retorted her -mother. “At home I have tea and rolls in bed, and come down about noon.” - -“Mercy! The day is just half gone then!” cried Jane. - -“Not if one sings till nearly midnight and has supper after that, or -dances, or entertains her friends,” said Mrs. Garden. “Oh, my heart, my -heart! And now I sing no more! Girls, I can’t believe it! It is like a -horrid dream. I waken trying to sing, or else I waken, to cry and cry, -from a dream that I am singing again and the audience are clapping, -clapping me, crying: ‘Bravo, linnet!’ They called me ‘the linnet’ -at home, because my name was Lynette, and they loved my singing. -Oh, me, oh, me!” She sank back with her face turned to her pillow; -her daughters saw her delicate body heave with sobs. Mary and Jane -exchanged looks of distress. - -“I think I can understand how hard it is, mother,” Jane said, timidly -kneeling beside the bed and touching one slender shoulder. “But maybe -your voice will come back. Everything grows in our lovely garden! And -we mean to take such care of you! Won’t you get used to us, and think -it isn’t so very bad not to hear applause, when your three girls are -admiring you as hard as they can?” she whispered. - -“And how would you like to get up this one morning and come out with -us, just to see the garden with the dew on it, and hear the birds?” -Mary pleaded, following Jane and stroking her mother’s hair with the -hand that had been endowed with beauty and a healing touch. “I think it -would make you feel as though nothing on earth mattered--for a while, -at least. And you should have coffee out there, and rolls, or tea, if -that’s what you like better. You’d love to be the birds’ audience this -time, little clever mother.” - -Mrs. Garden turned and looked up at them with a quick movement and a -laugh, though tears wet her cheeks; it was like one of Jane’s swift -changes. - -“What wheedlers! And what determination!” she cried. “Very well, then, -I’ll give in, and do the unheard-of: get up before six in the morning -and go outdoors! Only wait till I write my English friends what little -monsters I found over here, ready to drag me to torture! You two will -have to be my maids and help me dress. I’m the most helpless creature, -and you wouldn’t let me bring a maid over. I give you due notice: I’m -going to get one here!” - -“You shall have three, mother, if you like! First try us, and see if -we can’t hook, and button, and brush you! We want to so dreadfully!” -cried Jane. “That would be three, counting Florimel, though that wasn’t -what I meant.” She dropped on her knees again, and began putting on her -mother’s stockings and shoes, while Mary busied herself with sorting -out the hairpins and small belongings on the dressing-table. - -Both girls had become painfully shy and awkward, plainly trying to -conquer it and make their mother feel, what was true, that they -delighted in waiting upon her, but were too ill at ease to reveal their -pleasure. Mrs. Garden, on the contrary, grew merry and playful. She had -decided that the adventure of rising at what she called “the middle of -the night” was wholly funny, and she chattered and laughed throughout -her dressing, without a hint of her former sadness. - -Florimel added herself to the other two “Abigails,” as Mrs. Garden -called her lady’s maids, and claimed for her share of the service her -mother’s pretty light-brown hair. “It’s awfully soft and fluffy,” said -Florimel admiringly. “Is it the shampoo?” - -“Eggs, my dear,” said her mother. “The last maid I had would use -nothing else. You don’t imagine that’s why I get up with the -chickens--that the eggs have gone to my head, in another sense?” - -“Perhaps you recited Chantecler; did you, mother?” suggested Mary. “You -did recite, as well as sing, didn’t you?” - -“Oh, dear me, yes, but nothing of that sort! Child things. They say I -can speak like a little girl. And then I wore the most ravishing little -blue frock, and a captivating white pinafore. They say I actually -looked a child. I’ll do it for you some day. But what I love best to do -is imitations. I’ll do them all for you. My voice lets me recite for a -short time,” said Mrs. Garden eagerly. - -“I should think, if it wasn’t strong--it sounds clear and full when you -talk--but if it got a little tired I’d think you would sound more like -a child than ever,” Jane said. - -“What an understanding child you are, Janie!” her mother said, bringing -Jane’s quick colour to her cheeks. “Really, I think we four shall get -on quite nicely, don’t you? Only you don’t seem in the least like my -daughters. Over there I was treated like a girl, myself.” - -“Of course,” said Florimel decidedly. “I think it’s more than likely we -shall treat you like a girl, too, when we get acquainted.” - -“Now I’m ready. Dear me, don’t you wear gloves in the garden? Nor -garden hats? How frightful! Why, you’ll be like--what’s that little -song I used as an encore? ‘Three Little Chestnuts up from the Country?’ -That’s it! You’ll be three little brown chestnuts by autumn. Let me -see your hands. Of course! Quite tanned, and it’s only June! You have -beautiful hands, Mary! I hadn’t noticed them. Jane’s are pretty, -slender, and graceful; Florimel’s are very well, but yours are -beautiful, Mary. I think I’ve never seen nicer hands.” - -“Thank you, mother,” said Mary, hiding them in her sleeves. “I hope -they’ll be able to do things for you.” - -“That’s precisely the sort they look to be, my dear,” returned her -mother. “Now, if you’re ready, children, we may as well go out and see -whether the early birds have caught the worms! Dear me, I hope they’ve -made away with the caterpillars! The worst of gardens is that while the -flowers are delightful, the insects are simply maddening.” - -The girls received a new impression of the garden when their mother -came into it. To them it had always been their best-loved friend, -awaiting them, laden with gifts, if they neglected it, which rarely -happened. But Mrs. Garden did not regard it as wholly trustworthy. -She did not plunge carelessly into its welcome, as her children did. -Florimel was dispatched for a rug to guard her feet from dampness; Jane -was sent back to get a down cushion to ease and protect her shoulders; -Mary was set to testing currents of air, to determine where the least -draught blew. Altogether it suddenly was apparent to the girls that -going into the garden in the morning was not the simple thing they had -thought it. Yet this frail “English bit of motherwort,” as Mary called -her, was delighted with the garden, the birdsong, the sunshine, and the -fragrances, after she was made comfortable and safe. - -Mary ran away to prepare coffee for her, Mrs. Garden having decided -“to become a real American,” she said, and break her fast with coffee, -foregoing tea. But Anne had forestalled Mary. She had ready a delicious -potful of the perfect coffee which was the pride of that household, -and a tray filled with silver cups and saucers, cream and sugar, snowy -rolls and golden butter, and another supplementary tray with a great -bubble of a cut glass bowl filled with late strawberries, and the small -translucent dishes in which to serve them. - -“Oh, Anne, she must be happy here!” cried Mary, seeing these -preparations. - -“Don’t worry, Mary; she will be. She’s like a child, easily disturbed, -easily pleased,” said Anne. “She hasn’t changed in the least. I knew -you’d have to have something of this sort. Run back, dear child, and -get out a small table and call Win down. Then I’ll have Abbie help me -with these trays.” - -“Isn’t it lovely, Anne?” Mary exclaimed, flying on her errands. - -Win needed no calling; he met Mary in the hall. “I’ll take this, -Molly,” he said, preventing her attempt to carry out an old-fashioned -work table, whose drop-leaves could be raised for extra space. “Why -are you carrying off the furniture? And why not get a van, if we’re -moving?” - -“Breakfast in the garden, silly Win!” Mary panted. “Mother is out -there! She is liking it, I think.” - -Win controlled his strong desire to suggest that she ought to like -it. He had a very young man’s intolerance of a dependent and petted -woman, and he resented his sister-in-law’s forsaking her little girls. -Nevertheless, he made himself an acquisition to this garden party in -the early morning, set up the table, brought chairs, helped with the -trays, while Jane and Florimel arranged a wreath of Bleeding Heart -around the table edge, and laid a rose at each place, and Mary stuck -a branch of fragrant “syringa,” the mock orange, in the back of each -chair. - -Mrs. Garden grew animated and childishly happy watching these -preparations. “Isn’t it nice? Isn’t it delightful?” she repeated. -“Quite like a garden party. I think I shall love it here. I didn’t -remember it was so nice. But then I was only a girl and there were no -other girls with me. Now I have three girls and a fine gallant to keep -me company; that explains the difference. Couldn’t you possibly find a -little name for me that would be suitable, yet not so solemn as mother, -girls? Somehow I think I’ll never get used to being called mother.” - -“And it’s so lovely!” Jane exclaimed before she thought, then could -have bitten her tongue out for having spoken. Instantly she felt that -this request summed up the situation: they must think of this pretty -creature as something else than mother, something that expressed their -protection for her, not implying dependence upon her. - -“I’ve been thinking mother didn’t suit,” said Florimel, with her -usual candour. “Would Madrina do? Madre is mother, and ina is a -‘little’-whatever-it’s-put-to, isn’t it? That calls you our little -mother, like the sort of a toy mother you’ll be, I guess.” - -“Toy mother! Oh, Florimel! But perhaps that’s what I am,” laughed Mrs. -Garden. - -“Mother sounds less serious in French and Italian than it does in -German and English,” said Jane. - -“Do you know languages, children?” asked Mrs. Garden. - -“Not even one, though we can make ourselves understood in English,” -Mary said. - -“I know a good deal of German and French, and Italian I really know -quite well. I must begin to read with you, regularly, this summer. I -don’t want to be only a hindrance to you girls; I want to be a help, -too,” Mrs. Garden said with a pretty appealing eagerness. - -“No fear of that! And, anyway, aren’t people the best kind of help when -you can do for them? Let me give you these tremendous strawberries; -I’ve been picking out some bouncing ones for you,” Mary urged, -unconsciously illustrating the truth of the first part of her answer to -this “toy mother.” - - - - -CHAPTER SEVEN - -“’TIS JUST LIKE A SUMMER BIRD CAGE IN A GARDEN” - - -“Are you girls always as good as this?” asked Mrs. Garden on the third -day after her arrival. Her tone expressed something akin to despair. - -“Don’t you ever frolic, do anything young, perhaps something you ought -not to do? You’re like my grandmothers.” - -Mary and Jane laughed, glancing at each other. - -“We’re being good purposely, you know,” said Jane. “It isn’t an -accident.” - -“Very likely Florimel is in mischief this minute,” Mary added -consolingly. “She’s always likely to be, and it’s a good while since -she has travelled off a walk.” - -“How did you happen to name Mel that, madrina?” asked Jane. “Nobody -else has that name.” - -“I thought it pretty. The Gardens named you two; it was my turn to name -a baby. _Flori_ has something to do with flowers, and _mel_ -is Latin for honey, isn’t it? I thought it combined prettily with -Garden. It’s in Spenser’s ‘Fairy Queen,’” Mrs. Garden replied. - -“Spenser’s ‘Fairy Queen!’” Jane’s repetition expressed surprise. - -“Oh, I never read it,” her mother cried hastily. “It’s far too long and -old-time English to read, but I found out Florimel was in that poem. I -always liked to feel that nice books were around me, and to hear them -alluded to, but nobody but a teacher of English literature, I should -fancy, would read Spenser.” - -Mary tipped her head back and laughed with great enjoyment. “You’re -such a funny little personage, Mrs. Garden! You often say what other -people think, but don’t dare to say,” she cried. - -“Oh, well, that’s one advantage in having a career all your own; one -doesn’t have to bother about what other people do. I was a singer and -entertainer; I never had to read books to talk about them, you see. -Lots of people read what they think they ought to read; I always read -exactly what I wanted to read, and let the rest go,” explained Mrs. -Garden frankly. “Don’t you know any young people? No girls come here, -no boys, except that nice young secretary of Mr. Moulton’s, whom you -say Florimel found along the wayside--like a flower! Are your friends -keeping away from me? Because I wish they wouldn’t! Of course I’ve been -having just the rest I needed since I came, but it might be--don’t -you think?--the least bit dull to go on forever this way. I remember -I found Vineclad overwhelmingly dull when I lived here. Aren’t there -any pleasant people who will call on me, older than you are, but not -so elderly, so _sedately_ elderly as Mr. and Mrs. Moulton?” Mrs. -Garden gave her daughters a glance like a naughty child venturing on -mild disrespect to her elders. More than ever the relation between -this mother and her children seemed to be reversed, as Mary received -the glance and its suggestion with precisely that anxious air of -helplessness so many mothers wear when their children threaten to prove -difficult. - -“Why, yes, mother dear, there are a good many young people in Vineclad -who come to see us,” she replied. “They are letting us have you all -to ourselves at first, you know. We don’t know them as we should have -known them if Mr. Moulton had not been obliged to carry out father’s -ideas of education. Girls who are taught at home are a little -separated from the young people in school. But we see a good deal of -the Vineclad girls and boys. And you will have lots of callers, of -course, after people think you are ready for them. I don’t know whether -or not Vineclad is dull. I suppose it is, when you think about it and -have lived somewhere else. But there are lovely people here. Didn’t you -know some you liked twelve years ago? They’d be here now, I’m sure.” - -“So am I sure of it! I fancy Vineclad people are rooted!” laughed her -mother. - -“They used to call on me; perfectly nice creatures, but--Mary, they -used to want to teach me stitches and recipes because I was so young! -And that was precisely why stitches and recipes did not interest me!” - -“I think I like them.” Mary looked apologetic. - -“Because you are a little old lady! And I wasn’t--and am not!” cried -Mrs. Garden. - -“I don’t like them, either!” cried Jane. “But Mary loves fun, madrina. -You see she hasn’t been thinking of anything but getting you well.” - -“Surely I see,” returned Mrs. Garden, with the smile that always made -new applause burst forth when she acknowledged applause from her -audiences. “If you three little grandmothers of mine hadn’t so far -succeeded in getting me well, I suppose I should be quite content to -sun myself in the garden, like a lizard. But---- Yet it’s really very -charming here in this garden and house! When my boxes get here I shall -have no end of things to show you. You’ve no notion of the scrapbooks -I’m bringing, with my programmes and press notices in them, and I’m -afraid there’ll be so many photographs of me you’ll be impatient of -them. But one’s press agent demands constant sittings.” - -“It must seem dreadfully dull, madrina,” said Mary, rising with a line -between her clouded eyes. “Only wait! I should think you could wake -Vineclad when you feel stronger. Perhaps it won’t be so hard on you by -and by. Poor little singing linnet! Much as I love to have you for my -own, I think I’m able to wish it had not happened. I can faintly guess -how hard it is to drop out of all that glory and come home to three -little crude daughters, whom you don’t know and who can’t entertain -you. Let me shake up that pillow!” - -“You ought rather to shake me, sweet Mary!” cried her mother sincerely, -not deaf, in spite of her regret for what she had lost, to the pathos -in this dear girl’s voice, nor blind to the patient, self-forgetful -depth of her pitying love. “I’ll get on. It’s a great thing to find -you--each what you are.” - -“Well, I know I’d feel like an uprooted plant from the king’s garden, -dying on a country stone wall, if I were in your place!” cried Jane, -with an explosion that amazed her mother. - -“You are the most like me of the three, Janie,” she said. “But I was -never the little stick of dynamite that you are. I was merely a girl -that loved her own way of being happy and found it. I never cared -with the force you do; I liked and disliked quietly, and quietly -slipped through what I disliked and chose what I liked. I still like -pleasantness; it isn’t particularly pleasant to feel too strongly, I -fancy; I really never tried it. So I mean to enjoy rusting out here in -Vineclad with you--somehow! I haven’t found the way yet. Don’t look so -anxious, Mary sweetheart. How did they happen to call you Mary? You -are Martha, now, ‘troubled about many things.’ No, you’re not! You are -precisely what we mean when we say Mary!” Mrs. Garden lightly swayed -herself backward and tipped up her face to invite Mary to kiss her, -which she did, with heart as well as lips, feeling that this exotic -must blossom and brighten in their garden at any cost. - -Later, in the pantry, Jane came upon Mary shaking the lettuce for lunch -out of its cold-water submersion. She looked up, as Jane came in, with -such a sober face that Jane shook her, lightly, much as she was shaking -the lettuce. - -“You look like a frost-bitten Garden,” Jane declared, “and there’s no -sense!” - -“Suppose we can’t keep her, Janie? If she’s unhappy we shall not want -to keep her,” Mary sighed, dropping a spoonful of mayonnaise on to the -lettuce as if she said: “Ashes to ashes.” - -“I don’t think she’s so heartless, Mary,” said Jane, intending to -banish Mary’s anxiety by a shock, and certainly succeeding in shocking -her. - -“Heartless! Oh, Jane!” Mary cried. - -“What else would it be, if she didn’t care enough about her own -children to stay with them, when they were doing their best, too?” -maintained Jane. - -“If we had been her own children all along it would be different,” Mary -suggested. “I’m afraid such young girls as we can’t make her happy. -There’s so much we have to replace.” - -“I think we’re pretty nice,” said Jane honestly. “Lots of people -like girls young; the younger the better. Some people prefer babies, -even. Of course we are not companionable, like the people she’s been -with, nor entertaining that way, but I’d suppose we were interesting -in another way. Besides, we’re _hers_! There isn’t any sense in -trying to feel as if we were just little sugar gingerbread figures! We -think Florimel is so pretty we can’t do a thing, sometimes, but watch -her. And you like me, and laugh at my nonsense. And I _know_ -you’re--Mary! Often I want to fly off and do things and see things -myself, but I know all the time I’d fly back to you fast enough! I -always know that and say that, even when I’m craziest. I guess nobody -could have you around, Mary Garden, and feel they had a right to you, -and give you up, my darling! So what’s the use of worrying too much -about our cute little toy mother? She’ll root in the garden!” - -“You’re a queer mixture, my Janie,” said Mary, looking at Jane with -laughter and gratitude in her eyes. “Nobody would be expected to love -us as we love each other, you and I! Not that I mean that is part of -the queer mixture. But you’re as full of impossible schemes, and as -flighty as the wind, yet you’re really so sensible! More so than I am -and I seem----” - -“The church steeple and I the weathercock!” cried Jane. “So you are, -so I am. But you’re afraid of hurting somebody’s feelings, if you go -to bed and think the truth in the dark, where nobody can see you, and -when everybody thinks you’re asleep! I’m not! I think it’s right to -see straight--then you’re pretty sure to stand by people, because you -haven’t anything to change your mind about. That cute little mother -ought to be crazy over such a girl as you are, Mary, and such a pretty, -clever thing as Mel----” - -“And such a flame-warm, and flame-clever, and flame-beautiful daughter -as----” - -“Get the fire extinguisher, Molly!” Jane interrupted. “You see, after -all, you do know that our cunning linnet ought to enjoy her young -birds in this garden! Though I’m sorrier than you can be for her to -have lost her voice. Somehow, I believe I know better than you do what -that is to her. Molly, did you ever think of it? You’re the reliable, -house-motherly little soul, and I’m the flighty Garden, yet I’m older -than you are, though I’m not sixteen, and you’re trotting right up to -your eighteenth bend in the road?” - -Mary looked at her a moment, turning this statement over in her mind. -“You really are, in lots of ways. It’s that trick you have of knowing -what you don’t know at all,” said Mary, after that moment. - -“Hurrah for Mistress Mary and her definitions! That’s called intuition, -Molly!” cried Jane. - -To the amazement of both girls their mother came hurrying into the -dining-room. Her step was quick, her face flushed, her whole expression -and air alert as they had not yet seen it. - -“Oh, girls,” she cried breathlessly, “where can Anne be? Do you think -you can do anything? There’s a boy in the garden in a frightful way! He -dashed in at the side gate and quite crumpled up before me! He’s wet -and besmeared with mud; I fancy he’s been rescued from drowning, or -some one has tried to drown him, and he barely made the garden, running -away! I can’t leave him there! Come, for pity’s sake! Oh, where are -Anne and Abbie? Why don’t we keep a man about all day?” She wrung her -hands frantically as she spoke. - -Mary had dashed into the cold closet, back of the pantry, and brought -out a glass of brandy. She snatched up the bottle of household ammonia -that stood on the shelf beside the pantry sink, not to take time to go -after proper restorative ammonia. Jane had flown to the kitchen and had -wrenched Abbie from her steak at its critical moment, then had shrieked -Anne’s name until she had heard and had almost fallen downstairs, -recognizing the cry as announcing danger. - -Mrs. Garden led the way, as light of foot and fleet as her children. -Mary and Jane followed and Anne behind them, not able to move as -quickly as the rest. A little in arrear of the other four lumbered -Abbie, whose joints were refractory, carrying a pail of water and a -glass, also a large palm leaf fan. - -A short distance from the chair in which the girls had left their -mother lay a boy of childish build. A gray felt sombrero hat covered -his head; he was as wet and muddy as Mrs. Garden had described him, -but he was able to move for, as the rescue party came up, he rolled -over on his face, having been turned as if to get more air, and Jane’s -keen eyes saw him pull his hat tighter down over his head by the hand -farthest from them, slipped up to catch its broad brim. The lad wore -grayish knickerbockers and a loose flannel shirt that had been white, -but the mud with which he was generously decorated concealed its -original colour and barely revealed that his stockings were black and -his shoes old tan ones. - -“Wait a minute,” said Jane, thinking that there was something familiar -in the boy’s drooping shoulders and build. She put out her hands to -check Mary, who, overflowing with sympathy, was hastening to lift the -lad and pour between his cold lips a little of the brandy which she -carried. “Wait a minute, Anne; let mother turn him over.” - -Mary stopped, but looked at Jane, astonished. Anne gave her a sharp -glance. - -“All right, Jane; I think maybe it would be better,” Anne said. - -“Oh, I don’t want to touch him! I never could bear to do anything of -this sort!” shuddered Mrs. Garden. - -She went up to the boy, nevertheless, and shrinkingly took him by the -two dryest spots that she could select on his shoulders and turned him. -He resisted her and made the turning unexpectedly hard, considering -that he had fallen as he lay when he had entered, as if his last drop -of strength had been drained. Pulling him over, Mrs. Garden fell back -with a cry. - -“Florimel! Florimel, you little wretch! Whatever is wrong with you? Why -are you in such clothes?” she gasped. - -Florimel lay on her back, the hot sunshine of noon streaming down on -her mischievous face. Her black hair, shaken loose by her movement, -tumbled about her from the sombrero covering it. Her eyes danced, her -red cheeks dimpled, and her teeth gleamed as she lay, laughing till -she could not speak, ripples and chuckles shaking her, the picture of -supreme enjoyment. - -“You handsome imp!” cried her mother, as if she could not help it. -“You frightened me almost out of my life. I never dreamed it was you. -Whatever did you do it for?” - -“That’s why: to scare you,” said Florimel, lying still, in no hurry to -get up, nor having much breath with which to do so. “I was watching you -this morning and I thought you looked dull; I thought, maybe, you’d -like to have something happen. Whenever we get to feeling that way it’s -up to Jane or me to start something. I knew Jane wouldn’t dare, not for -you, yet, so I did. Got these things down at Allie Ives’, her brother -Phil’s, you know.” Florimel turned her brilliant eyes on her sisters, -expecting them to recognize Phil Ives. “Allie and I muddied them -up--Mrs. Ives didn’t care, Phil’s outgrown them--and we turned the hose -on me; I never take cold, Anne knows it! Then I ran home, by the back -way, and tumbled in here! I thought it would scare you! It did, didn’t -it?” Florimel pleadingly asked her mother, desiring to hear again of -her complete success. - -“Certainly it did, dreadfully.” Mrs. Garden’s tone was satisfactory to -Florimel. - -“Didn’t any one see you coming home, Florimel? What would they think!” - -“That’s all right, little motherkins,” cried Florimel, jumping up and -displaying her costume, with its muddy wetness, to such a ridiculous -effect that there was no scolding her, for it was funny. “I didn’t meet -any one but the Episcopalian minister, and he loves nonsense, and the -grocer’s boy, and he grinned; he loved it! And an old funny woman down -the street who is too nearsighted to see I wasn’t some boy--unless Chum -gave me away, but I guess she doesn’t know Chum! Anyhow, people all -know we’re the Garden girls, and Vineclad always looks up to Gardens, -so it doesn’t matter. Besides, they expect me to cut up; I always -do--and Mary never! It’s all right, mothery. Do you like me better as -a boy? I do. Why didn’t you let the baby be a boy, little mother? When -you had two girls, and she’d have loved so to have been one?” - -“Did you actually do this because you wanted to entertain me?” asked -Mrs. Garden, looking as helpless as she felt, laughing, yet puzzled by -this prank. - -“You and me,” said Florimel honestly. “I’d got tired of being so steady -ever since you came. I’m always getting into scrapes; I thought it was -time you got acquainted with the real me--not that this is a scrape! -But honest and true, I did think you looked as if it was time something -shook you up, little lady-mother.” - -“I felt that,” Mrs. Garden acknowledged. “But, really, Florimel, I -hope you won’t feel obliged to go to extremes to enliven me! Oughtn’t -she get off those wet clothes, Mary; oughtn’t she, Anne? Do you really -think it won’t make her ill?” - -“She’s proof against illness, or she’d have been buried ten years ago,” -said Anne. “She’s as healthy as a ragamuffin--which she looks like! Of -course you must go and dress, Florimel! Did you leave your frock at -Allie’s? Lunch is almost ready, too.” - -“Oh, Jerusalem Halifax Goshen! My steak, my steak! You abominable, -desolating Florimel, if it’s burnt!” screamed Abbie, dropping her pail, -with the glass now floating on its surface, and ambling toward the -house, her big palm leaf fan making her look like a large insect with -one disabled wing. - -“If Florimel sees that you need entertaining, I think we’d better give -a tea for you, and invite Vineclad to make your acquaintance, madrina,” -said Mary, offering her mother her arm for support from the garden to -the house after the shock of Florimel’s invasion. - -Mrs. Garden slipped her hand into Mary’s arm and shook it delightedly. -“If only you would!” she cried. “I’ve been wishing you would, but I -didn’t like to suggest it. Why not a garden party? I have the loveliest -gown for it you ever saw in all your life, and a hat that shades my -face just enough! They told me it made me look less than twenty-five! -I wore it at home in England. But only once, girls; think of it! Do -give me a party! I never wore that delicious costume except to the -fête champêtre which dear Lady Hermione gave when Balindale came of -age. You know Lord Balindale is not yet twenty-two, and this was his -twenty-first birthday, last September. The gown isn’t in the least out -of style. How lovely you are, Mary, to have thought of this!” - -Mary stopped short in their slow progress houseward. She looked at -her mother, and then at Jane aghast. “Oh, little mother,” she cried, -“what are we to do! Here you’ve been playing with countesses and having -coming-of-age parties, precisely like an English story, and we’ve -nothing in the least splendid to give you here! The greatest personages -in all Vineclad and its neighbourhood are Mrs. Dean, the widow of the -founder of the college; the various ministers’ wives, and the doctors’ -and lawyers’ families, and the bank families; and a retired author, who -is really very nice, but doesn’t care to go out a great deal; and Mr. -and Mrs. Moulton! And is Lord Balindale an earl?” - -“Certainly he is, but one doesn’t expect earls in a republic. Americans -are quite as nice in manners and as clever as titled people--provided -they are nice Americans--though, as a rule, their voices are not as -good! Of course one doesn’t expect much in a small country place! But -pray give the party, Mary! At least I can wear my gown, and it will be -something to think about!” begged Mrs. Garden. - -“Of course, if you want it,” Mary hesitated, but Jane cried: - -“That’s the idea; it will be an excuse for dressing up, and being nice -yourself! I always imagined parties were things to dress up for more -than they were to enjoy. All I ever went to were, anyway! We’ll have a -lovely garden party, little madrina, if only because you’ll be lovely -at it!” - - - - -CHAPTER EIGHT - -“AND ADD TO THESE RETIRED LEISURE, THAT IN TRIM GARDENS TAKES HIS -PLEASURE.” - - -Mary and Win were walking slowly over to Mr. and Mrs. Moulton’s, -discussing the coming party with immense seriousness, at least on -Mary’s part. Win could not be induced to regard it as of as much -importance as she did. - -“Mary,” he said, “it’s precisely here: you give a party; you do your -best to make it a pleasant party, to both sides, hosts and invited; you -either succeed, or you don’t--most likely you neither quite succeed -nor quite fail. And when the next full moon comes around it won’t make -tuppence worth of difference how it came out. That’s the way I look at -it, and it’s the right way to look at it, not because it’s my way, but -because it _is_! This won’t be different from all other Vineclad -parties.” - -“Mercy, yes, it will!” cried Mary. “Mother hasn’t been at the others.” - -“Not since you remember parties, nor I, for that matter, but she -has been here,” said Win. “She knows what to expect, and if Vineclad -doesn’t remember her, all the better for Vineclad. It ought to be -an interesting party to the town, because it has her to wonder over -beforehand, and to see at the time. Your guests are sure to enjoy it. -Whether Lynette does, what she’ll think of it, I don’t know.” - -“But I can guess,” sighed Mary. Then they both laughed. - -“Mary’s come to be braced up, Mrs. Moulton,” announced Win, when they -had been greeted by both Mr. and Mrs. Moulton, and after Mark Walpole, -with a shining, joyous face, had brought for Mary the low chair she -liked, and placed it beside her guardian. - -“It’s pleasanter within to-night, my dear,” Mrs. Moulton said. “I think -there’s a heavy dew. What is wrong, child, that you need bracing?” - -“Nothing wrong, Mrs. Moulton, and I need encouraging, not really -bracing; that’s Win’s exaggeration. I--we’ve got to give a party.” - -“Dear me, why?” asked Mr. Moulton. “Are you coming out, Mary?” - -“No, sir; never, I imagine,” said Mary. “I’m out, or I never shall be -out; I don’t know which it is. We children were born knowing everybody -in old Vineclad, so there’s no society for us to be introduced to; -we’ve been asked to places with you ever since we could walk. But -mother is getting restless; she needs amusing. We have to give a party, -a tea--no, a garden party; to get her introduced to her neighbours.” - -“I see! Why should that afflict you, Mistress Mary?” asked Mr. Moulton. - -“Everything is so turned about!” cried Mary. “We’ve got to invite -people to meet our mother. Who ever heard of girls doing that? And--do -you suppose we can make it a nice party? And isn’t it ridiculous for -us to ask people? Yet mother doesn’t want to, because no one has yet -called on her--except you, and you are our own! Wouldn’t it be better -if you sent out the invitations, Mrs. Moulton?” - -“I invite people to your house to meet your mother, my dear? Hardly! -Send your invitations and don’t worry. I see you are afraid that -Vineclad society may bore your mother. There is a consolation in -Vineclad, as there is almost always a good side to a drawback! If -Vineclad is dull it is because it is so small and old-fashioned, and, -for that very reason, it will not misunderstand you, nor be critical -of the peculiarities of your party. I think you may safely count upon a -pleasant afternoon, my dear,” Mrs. Moulton reassured her. - -“Mother has a beautiful gown for a garden party, which she wants to -wear. She has worn it but once, to Lord Balindale’s coming-of-age -celebration, in England. He’s an earl, Mrs. Moulton! And for the second -time she is to wear it here. Doesn’t it sound rather awful?” Mary asked. - -“I haven’t heard a description of it, Mary,” said Mrs. Moulton dryly. -“I doubt that your mother would have an awful gown. Of course you -can’t mean that you are overpowered by its having been worn on a -superior occasion? No good American admits superior occasions--at -least not titled superiors. And, if it came to that, my child, the -original Garden bore a title and renounced it, when he came here, for -conscientious reasons. Doesn’t that offset the incense of past glories -which that gown may waft?” - -“Yes, it does. I knew that about the first Garden, but I haven’t -thought of it for a long time,” laughed Mary. “To tell the truth, it -isn’t the earl’s party in itself that worries me: it’s only that I do -so want mother to be happy here!” - -“Surely, dear,” said Mr. Moulton gently. “Your mother is easily won by -kindness. After she has fluttered a while, restlessly, she will settle -down in our blest Garden spot. She is more of a child than any one of -her children, I think.” - -“So do I!” cried Mary. “I would never think of going to her with -bothers, as I do to you. We all feel that we must protect her, even -that witch of a Florimel feels it. Then you think our party will be all -right, and I may go on and make out the list of invitations? Will you -help me with that, Mrs. Moulton? I think we ought not to ask a few, -as I thought at first. I think it would be right to ask everybody we -know, not just our own set; then mother will really be introduced to -Vineclad.” - -“Please hand me my fountain pen and a pad, Mark,” Mrs. Moulton answered -Mary indirectly. “We’ll make out our list this instant.” - -For an hour they worked on this task, Mr. Moulton and Win throwing in -suggestions which Mark saw were absurd, although he did not know any of -the people discussed, because the elder and the younger man twinkled -at each other in making them, Mary laughed at them, and Mrs. Moulton -passed them over with dignified contempt. - -“That is seventy-five names, Mrs. Moulton,” Mary announced, adding up -the three pages of the pad. “Some of these people won’t come, but most -of them will. Isn’t that a large party? Jane and I counted up a third -of those in the first place.” - -“Either you must make it small, keep it within the circle which the -Garden family has always moved among, or else you must include every -one set down here,” said Mrs. Moulton. “Since you are to do this, Mary, -I advise making it what the Old Campaigner, in the Newcomes, called ‘an -omnium gatherum.’” - -“With a caterer?” asked Mary. - -“No. With cakes ordered from Mrs. Mills and ice cream and thin homemade -sandwiches and your own coffee, tea, and chocolate. Abbie and Anne can -manage it. I’ll lend you Violet; she is unsurpassed in cooking; her -coffee is indescribable. But you know that. And you know she is like -all of her race, ready to do anything for any one she likes, though -quite unreconcilable to those whom she does not fancy. And you know -she calls you: ‘Dem Gyarden blossums!’ Vineclad would be inclined to -resent a caterer. What are you three to wear?” Mrs. Moulton ended with -a look of suspicion at Mary. - -Mary proved that the suspicion was just by the dismay that overspread -her face. Then she laughed. - -“Never thought of it; not once!” she cried. “But we have something that -will do. A white dress is best, isn’t it?” - -“I don’t know as to that, but you have not ‘something that will do!’” -said Mrs. Moulton firmly. “You are to send for something perfectly new, -and perfectly suitable. You must live up to the gown that appeared at -the earl’s majority celebration. White for you, demure Mary, but I -think pale sea green for Jane, and rose colour for Florimel. I shall -write to New York in the morning to have gowns sent up on approval; I -have an account at Oldfellow’s. I intend to see that you are properly -apparelled for this introductory festivity.” - -“Althea, I am not sure that I shall approve your teaching Mary to be -vain,” interposed Mr. Moulton. - -“Austin,” his wife retorted, “if nature is not strong enough to make a -girl of seventeen vain, I shall be quite harmless. I suppose I should -dislike vanity in our girl, but I sometimes feel that I should like to -make her know that she was worth considering.” - -“Oh, dear Mrs. Moulton!” Mary protested, rosy red from her throat to -her soft brown hair. “No fear of my forgetting Mary Garden.” - -“I see her alluded to in the papers rather often,” said Mr. Moulton. “I -saw to-day that she was singing in London.” - -“Poor real Mary Garden!” sighed Mary, pityingly, as she arose to go. -“She has to be used so much to tease me!” - -“The party’s all arranged, is it?” asked Win, also rising. - -“No, indeed; it’s only arranged to be arranged!” cried Mary, looking -around the grave room with the affection she always gave it. - -It was a high-ceiled room, with arched door-ways, white wainscoting, -an ample unadorned fireplace; soft green, patternless paper on the -walls making an effective background for excellent pictures, and its -furniture was plain and solid, square in outlines, upholstered in dark -brocade. - -“This room always looks to me as if it had never let anything that was -not good come into it, at least not to stay in it,” she said. - -“That is true,” Mrs. Moulton confirmed her, adding with a look of -profound admiration at her husband: “Mr. Moulton’s father built this -house and they say Austin is his father over again.” - -“I’ll walk with them, if you are not going to close the house for a -while, Mrs. Moulton,” said Mark, offering Mary the little scarf which -had slipped from her arm to the floor. There was a look in his eyes, -as his hand lightly brushed Mary’s shoulder, laying the scarf over it, -that sent the colour flushing to Mrs. Moulton’s brow, it so surprised -her. - -“I’m sure I don’t know what I should say to that!” she exclaimed. Then, -as Mark looked at her in blank amazement, she recalled herself. “Of -course, walk over with them, Mark; we are not going to bed for an hour -or so,” she added. - -“They’re awfully good to me, Mary and Win,” said Mark, as they went -along the street made silent by Vineclad’s early bedtime habits. “Mr. -Moulton is trusting me more and more with important bits of his work, -and they both are treating me as if they considered me something -besides a snip of a boy whom they were paying. I’m having a fine time -with them and the botanical work I wanted to do but never expected to -be able to touch.” - -“Gets better every day, doesn’t it?” cried Mary, raising her face to -his, glowing with pure joy over this fortunate state of things. - -“Every day lovelier than the last!” declared Mark, looking into Mary’s -unclouded, unsuspicious eyes. And Win silently received the impression -which, a little earlier, had startled Mrs. Moulton, but of which Mary -was as unconscious as a crystal is of the rainbow colours playing -through it. - -In the succeeding days after this call the hours sped rapidly, filled -with the absorbing topic of the garden party and its business. The -invitations were sent out and all but six of them were accepted. The -gowns sent up from New York by the famous house of Oldfellow proved -to be deliriously attractive. Mary did not hesitate a moment, but -seized upon a soft white gown, so simple in its lines, so exquisite in -material, design, and workmanship, with its only trimming real lace -upon its clinging round neck and sleeves, that it seemed to have been -designed expressly for this girl, whose sweetness was of a type that -forbade ornate decoration. Jane could not decide between a pale green -gown and a pale golden one, either of which made of her brilliant, -delicate beauty a jewel perfectly set. The golden gown won the day -at last and in it Jane’s red-gold tints of hair and eyes became the -attributes of a sun-maiden. Florimel was offered no choice of colour, -only of design in various rose pinks. Above each one she glowed like a -living rose. The frock they all voted for her to wear was the palest of -them all, a shell-like rose colour, floating over its own shade. - -Mrs. Garden was in ecstasy; she gained in strength on each of these -happy days. “I don’t care what the party is like, I’m having such fun -now!” she truthfully declared. - -Mrs. Mills, whose cakes were the correct supplement to one’s own -kitchen limitations in Vineclad, sparing the housekeeper the -mortification of having recourse to a professional caterer, made the -best examples of her skill for the Garden garden party. Ice cream might -be ordered from the nearest large town; Vineclad did not disapprove -of buying ice cream, so for this party it was ordered from abroad. -But this did not release the Garden kitchen from weighty obligations -and achievements. It was supplemented by Violet, Mrs. Moulton’s most -competent and blackest of cooks, to whom the preparation of the coffee -was securely entrusted. Twelve young girls, from the nearby industrial -school orphanage, were engaged to serve the guests. They were to be -dressed alike, in white waists and skirts, and Mrs. Garden pronounced -their effect “refreshing among the garden foliage and blossoms.” - -Jane dressed her mother’s hair, relieved to know that her picturesque -hat would more than conceal any deficiency in her maid’s skill. The -gown which had but once before appeared in public, and then in an -august and distant place, was revealed for the first time to the girls; -Mrs. Garden had refused them a glimpse of it before the day. It was of -white lace, skirt, waist, and coat, lined with white silk, yet touched, -with a French artist’s skill, with exactly the correct effective amount -of a wonderful red, like the heart of a rare rose. Roses of the same -shade lay, as if they had fallen, on one side of the lace on the hat, -and the same marvellous colour lined the lace parasol, that added the -last touch of perfection to the costume. - -“Didn’t that young earl, Lord Balindale, die on his twenty-first -birthday? I’d expect that dress and all to be the end of him,” said -Florimel, regarding her mother literally with open mouth and eyes. - -“Nice, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Garden, much gratified by the effect of her -magnificence. “No, he survived, Florimel. There were other gowns there -that day which might easily have been as fatal as this one. Do you -suppose all Vineclad will perish off the earth? We’ve asked most of it -here.” - -“Well, there’s one thing sure, it never in all its Vineclad life saw -anything like you, Mrs. Lynette Garden, who-can’t-possibly-be-our-mother!” -declared Jane. - -“Some of our guests will adore you, and some of them will detest you; -your gown is too magnificent for a small place like Vineclad to stop -halfway,” said Mary, displaying her understanding of small places. “Of -course our own friends will be in raptures over you,” she added, seeing -her mother’s face cloud. - -A carpet rug had been spread at one end of the lawn side of the garden; -on this Mrs. Garden, her daughters, and Mrs. Moulton were to stand to -receive the guests. The invitations had run “from five to nine.” This -allowed the heat of the day to be over when the first guests came, and -it gave three hours of sunset light to show the beauty of the scene at -its best, and one hour in which the Japanese lanterns, hung from tree -to tree throughout the great garden, might burn to transform it into -fairyland for the close of the garden festival. It was funny to see -the arrival of the guests. Vineclad held certain families, like the -Moultons and the Gardens themselves, which for generations had been -accustomed to the best society, at home and abroad; but the majority of -its citizens were the average small-town type, upright, good people, -refined in taste and principles, ambitious to grasp opportunity as it -was offered to them, but wholly inexperienced in the ways and standards -of a larger, better-equipped world. - -When these women, in their “best dresses,” eloquent of the home use of -paper patterns, secure, most of them, in being silk, decorated with a -fichu of machine-made lace, came up to greet the Garden girls and be -presented to the princess who looked scarcely older than they, and yet -was introduced to them as “my mother,” their faces were a study. The -struggle between diffidence, pride, and amazement was so easily read -that Mrs. Garden grew younger every instant, finding herself once more -taking part in a play, and the rôle assigned to her far from easy. - -But Florimel, with her overflowing fun, Mary, with her sweetness and -tact, beloved as she was by the entire community, high and low, threw -themselves into the task of entertaining, and were seconded by some of -their girl friends and some older ones, and most of all by Win, who -knew precisely how to set everybody at ease and to make them forget -themselves in a laugh. Jane never could be at her best in a crowd, so -she stayed at her post beside her mother, leaving the entertaining to -the others. - -The people whom Mrs. Garden had known when she had lived her brief -married life in Vineclad came later than the others and instantly Mrs. -Garden renewed her slight acquaintance with them, chatting and laughing -so prettily that they were enchanted with her. Jane, close at her -elbow, made mental notes of how to be a social success. - -The refreshments were delicious, the young waitresses served them -deftly, Anne and Abbie directing them, and to their boundless relief, -the Garden girls saw that all their guests were, at last, having a -thoroughly good time. Win and Mark commanded a selected force of young -men, or big boys, as one liked better to regard them, and lighted -the lanterns when the last radiance of the beautiful June afterglow -faded away. Ray by ray the myriad little lights began to gleam over -the garden, made more vast, and transformed into mystery, by the deep -shadows waving between these stationary fireflies, swinging with their -particoloured shapes in all directions. The guests knew that they were -expected to go, but still lingered, entranced by the beauty of the -scene which the sunset had made lovely beyond words, but which the -lanterns now, beneath the stars, revealed in a new and more fascinating -beauty. - -“If only I could sing! Can’t you start them singing, Jane?” whispered -Mrs. Garden. - -Always ready to sing, Jane raised her voice, and from all over the -great garden the chorus joined her, till at last, realizing that they -were exceeding the time limit of their invitations by almost an hour, -the guests sang the good-night song: “Good-night, Ladies,” and melted -away. - -With one of her characteristic changes of mood the tears ran down Mrs. -Garden’s cheeks in the shadow of the tree against which she leaned, and -fell on her glorious gown. She could no longer sing; she was so tired; -she had had a happy time; the garden was full of sweet odours, brought -out by the night; it was all wonderful, mysterious, lovely--and she -could no longer sing! Mary, quick to see every movement of her new, -absorbing charge, noted the droop of her body and went to her, slipping -both arms around her mother’s slender waist. - -“Had a nice time, little madrina? Tired?” she asked. - -“I’ve enjoyed it a great deal better than I thought I should, I’ve had -a nice time, really, Mary. And I’m launched in Vineclad society!” said -Mrs. Garden, with a nervous laugh that to Mary’s true ear held in it -the suggestion of a sob. - -“You’re tired, dearest,” said this mother-daughter. “Say good-night to -Mr. and Mrs. Moulton--they’re still here--and come to bed.” - - - - -CHAPTER NINE - -“WHOSE YESTERDAYS LOOK BACKWARD WITH A SMILE” - - -There were two immediate results of the garden party. One seemed -trivial, but indirectly brought about important effects. The other -made immediate difference in the daily life of the Garden girls, and -seemed to them more important than it was. The first result of the -party was that Mrs. Garden insisted upon employing “a whole gardener,” -as Florimel put it. The old garden was so well established, such -a large proportion of its lavish bloom came from hardy perennials -and trim shrubs of generous natures, that Mary and Win, who decided -such questions, had never thought it necessary to employ a gardener -exclusively for their work, but had claimed a sixth of a skilful, -but cranky, Scot, who gave one day a week to them and to five other -families. - -The garden party had been damaging to the garden in its more vulnerable -parts, and now Mrs. Garden, for the first time intervening in -household arrangements, urged the employment of a man who should be all -the Gardens’ own--and their garden’s own. - -“He might be a person who could also drive a car,” she suggested. “I -think I shall get a car soon.” - -“Oh, madrina, let us be your chauffeuresses!” Florimel cried, jumping -up and down, instantly afire. “Jane and I would love to run a car!” - -“But not Mary!” Mary interposed. “I wouldn’t be a ‘chauffeuress’ for -anything you could offer me.” - -“Mel is right; I’d love it,” said Jane. “Do you suppose we could do it, -madrina?” - -Their mother regarded them thoughtfully, her head on one side, as if -the car were waiting and the question admitted no delay in answering. - -“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I’m not fond of seeing girls do men’s -work. Yet you two are rather the sort to carry it off well; do it well -and not have the effect of oversmartness. We might make it a success. -But that has nothing to do with the gardener and his driving; you -couldn’t look after the car altogether.” - -“Now just imagine sitting up in the front seat, with your hands on the -wheel, and stooping over to change gears, in that easy way, just as if -you’d shifted gears for ages!” cried Florimel, in irrepressible rapture -over the picture. - -“I always thought that I should like to blow one of those horns, that -sound like sudden hysterics, right behind a fearfully stout man who -had no idea a car was near,” said Jane, candidly acknowledging this -naughty-small-boy ambition. - -“How does one get servants in Vineclad?” Mrs. Garden persisted, intent -upon her new idea. “I want a man about the place; we need one. Shall we -advertise?” - -“I suppose so,” Mary hesitated. “You left us Anne, you know, and she -has looked after everything till Jane and I began to be able to help. -Mrs. Moulton found Abbie long ago. We never had to get any one. I don’t -believe there are many gardeners in Vineclad--or chauffeurs, especially -not together! I imagine you must advertise in the city.” - -“I’ll put in an advertisement, then I’ll get Win to go down and buy -the car--I couldn’t decide on one myself--and see the men who answer -the advertisement. It ought to work out perfectly,” said Mrs. Garden, -more and more in love with her plan as it matured. She was quite -childish about it, as eagerly anticipating her gardener as her car, and -perfectly sure, now that she had decided upon them, that she must not -delay an unnecessary hour obtaining them. - -The second result of the garden party was that “the Garden girls’ cute -mother” became the absorbing interest with the other girls of Vineclad. -Mrs. Garden’s prettiness, her little ways, her poetical name--the girls -declared that Lynette Garden was the loveliest name that they had ever -heard--her interesting history and, not least, her marvellous costume -worn at the party, were discussed with unflagging interest among the -younger generation in Vineclad. Mrs. Garden was so wonderfully youthful -that the girls felt no hesitation in approaching her, so her three -daughters suddenly found themselves in demand, as never before. - -Elias Garden, LL.D., had held certain peculiar theories relative to -girls’ education. He held them so strongly that, in making his friend -Austin Moulton their guardian, he had laid down the course which must -be taken in regard to his girls’ training definitely, under such -binding conditions in his will that there was no loophole for Mr. -Moulton, nor for their mother, had she stayed in Vineclad, to bring -them up otherwise than as Mr. Garden had ordained. Neither of the -girls was to go to any sort of school until she was eighteen; then -she was to be free to choose her career and the preparation for it. -But, with all the preceding years spent outside of special training, -it was a question whether one of the Garden girls would be prepared -at eighteen to take the required examination for entrance in a school -suitable to that age. Their father had insisted upon certain studies -for his children, under carefully selected masters. Languages the -doctor had left for more mature study; the ordinary accomplishments -of young girls he had said should be acquired, or passed over, -according to the individual talents of the children. But history they -must learn; philosophy they must read; mathematics were to be taught -them thoroughly, and, especially, English literature, and still more -English literature; and a careful, but not a text-bookish grammatical -study of the English tongue. Astronomy and geology they were to read -with a competent teacher. The doctor had requested that they be made -conversant with foreign lands, through books of travel, and especially -that they be given a general knowledge of great art and music; not -to draw, to play, nor to sing, but in such wise that they might -enjoy other people’s performance and the noble pictures, statues, and -architecture which are the inheritance of the ages. For the rest Doctor -Garden had amply provided for the training of any particular talent -that one of his girls might develop; these things were obligatory. - -In consequence of these theories, incumbent upon their guardian to -carry out, Mary, Jane, and Florimel were separated from other girls of -their age by the insurmountable barriers of their different education. -Nourished as they were upon the great English classics, they knew -much that girls of their age had not only never heard of, but which a -great many people, unfortunately, miss throughout their lives. They -were thoughtful and mature beyond their years because their minds were -stored with the best of the poets, yet they were wholly ignorant of the -world and knew nothing of what children younger than Florimel pick up -from one another. They were more than anxious to be friendly to their -contemporaries, and they were liked for their wit, their friendliness, -their beauty. But the other Vineclad girls pronounced the Garden girls -“queer,” that convenient word, covering what is not clearly perceived, -and, with amiability on both sides, the Garden girls were usually left -to their own companionship--which, after all, they preferred to any -other. - -But now the state of things was different. The Vineclad girls began -to frequent Hollyhock House, drawn by the fascination of the charming -little creature who was the girls’ unexpected and unlikely mother, and -who had been before the public so long, even, it was whispered, having -“sung at court!” Mrs. Garden was quick to perceive that she was fast -becoming an idyl and an idol to the girls. She felt so much younger -than her years, she was so fond of admiration and so accustomed to it, -that she basked in the adulation of her visitors and became happier and -more contented for having it. - -“The girls are so dear, Mary,” she said. “Really, I find them perfectly -charming! It would never do to say so, but I think Vineclad is far -nicer in its younger set than in its older one. I’m quite happy with -the girls, but I find their mothers and aunts a little, just a little -frumpy--please, dear!” - -Mary laughed. “I’ll let you, small madrina; don’t be afraid to say it! -I’m so glad that the girls amuse you! It must be because we’ve got our -labels on wrong; we are your mother and you are our little girl!” - -“Oh, _you’re_ not pokey, Mary; not you, nor Jane, nor Florimel; -not a bit! You are much the cleverest girls here, as you are the -prettiest. That isn’t prejudice, because even now I can’t believe -you’re my babies, but it’s a fact!” cried Mrs. Garden loyally. “You -know I haven’t shown you my scrapbooks nor my photographs yet. Well, -I’m going to have them all brought into the garden this afternoon, -and Gladys Low, Dorothy Bristead, Audrey Dallas, and Nanette Hall are -coming to see them with you. You won’t mind?” - -“Why, mother-girl, of course not! We like those girls best,” cried Mary. - -“So do I!” said Mrs. Garden, evidently greatly pleased by this -unanimous verdict. “Wait! I’m going to call up the Moultons and ask -that nice Mark Walpole to come over. Then I’ll call up Win and tell -him to come home early. Girls always have a better time with some boys -about, even though there aren’t enough to go around! It’s better fun -that way, once in a while; then one has the fun of seeing which of the -girls score.” - -“I’m shocked, madrina!” cried Jane, coming in at that moment and -swinging her mother’s scant hundred and eight pounds off the floor in a -big hug. “Needn’t bother with Sherlock-Holmes-experimenting on Win! He -thinks Audrey Dallas beyond scoring, soared right up to the top of the -column and stayed there!” - -“Really!” cried Mrs. Garden, pausing with the telephone handle in her -hand as she was about to ring up the Moultons’ number. “I didn’t know! -Why didn’t you tell me? I love a romance, and Win is a dear boy--always -was.” - -“We never thought about it. It’s not a romance, yet,” said Jane -carelessly. “Win thinks she’s the only girl in sight, except us, and we -don’t count that way. But Audrey’s aiming for college, and Win isn’t -visible to her naked eye; no boy is! He sees her, and no one else, when -she’s around.” - -“Audrey may be intent on college, Janie, and not courting romance -now, but I assure you I never saw a girl in my life so interested in -intellectual aims that she could not at least see a handsome youth’s -admiration, even though she would not dally to regard it,” said Mrs. -Garden wisely. “Central, please give me Mr. Austin Moulton, 4-8-2 -Willow Street.” - -Florimel had been on the couch, submerged in a book and a box of -buttercups, a combination that satisfied her, mind and body, for she -dearly loved the condemned habit of eating while she read. Now she -raised her head and rolled over approvingly. - -“That’s what I always thought, madrina. I don’t believe a girl doesn’t -feel pleased when such a perfect duck of a fellow as our Win thinks -she’s the cream of the whole dairy! And I’m sure she’s as proud as she -can be to think she’s strong minded enough to go right on thinking -she’s only thinking of college! I’m only thirteen, but I can see that,” -she announced. - -“Just let me order a few thinks, madrina, when you’re through with -the telephone; Mel put all the thinks we had in the house into that -sentence,” said Jane. - -“Mother can’t hear when they connect her if you two keep up that -chatter,” suggested Mary. “As to being _only_ thirteen, Mellie, -I’ve an idea that thirteen sees most, because it’s so sharply -interested in getting facts--especially of that sort!” - -“Well, I’m interested in all there is going,” said Florimel truthfully, -once more plunging into her book, which swallowed her up as completely -and instantly as if she had not emerged from it. - -“Mark will come! I’ll tell Win now. Perhaps I’d better say who’ll -be here, if you think he likes to see Audrey,” cried Mrs. Garden -gleefully, perfectly happy in the prospect of the afternoon before her. - -“Isn’t it lucky our linnet sings over trifles as cheerfully as over -anything worth chirping about?” asked Jane. She and Mary were always -congratulating each other on their mother’s childish lightness of heart. - -The girls came trouping, all together, at a little before three in the -afternoon. - -“It’s fearfully early to come, Mary,” said Dorothy Bristead, as -spokesman of the four, “but Mrs. Garden told us to come early; she -had too much to show us to get through in a short time. Besides, we -couldn’t wait. She told us something about the photographs she’s going -to show us. Are they wonderful?” - -“We haven’t seen them yet,” began Mary, then added quickly, seeing that -Dorothy looked shocked: “Her boxes have been an endless time coming; -they have been here only four days. Mother wanted us to wait until she -had everything arranged in order for us to see. It isn’t that we’re not -as interested as we can be.” - -“Oh, yes!” breathed Gladys Low fervently. “She told us about her -little girl costumes and Snow White and the Easter Bunny! And the -flower dress! I don’t see how you _bear_ it, girls, to have -her right in the house, and to know she is your mother! I’d be -_crazy_!” - -“It isn’t so bad,” said Florimel, before Mary could check her. “Perhaps -we’d mind it more if she seemed like our mother, but we take care of -her as if she were a--soap bubble!” - -“Will you call mother, please, Florimel?” Mary interposed. “Mel means -that we can’t help feeling as if some one had sent us something frail -from England, to be taken care of; not to be bothered by us, you know, -Gladys.” - -“Of course I know!” Gladys’ assent was almost reverent. “She’s lovely!” - -“So glad to see you, girls!” cried Mrs. Garden, floating into the room, -in a thin white gown with pink ribbons, with a lightness of motion -that suggested the soap bubble which had occurred to Florimel as the -most fragile and beautiful simile that she could use to describe her -mother’s delicacy. “I have everything laid out in order in the library. -It is too warm to enjoy the garden, and Anne has promised us a little -treat after you are tired of my pictures.” Mrs. Garden laid her hand -caressingly on the shoulder of the girl nearest to her. It was Audrey -Dallas, who reddened with delight, raising her eyes adoringly to Mrs. -Garden’s deep-blue ones, eyes that were bright yet full of appealing -pathos. - -Mrs. Garden led the way into the library. Tables, the couch, several -chairs were stacked with photographs and scrapbooks. - -“It must seem queer to you to see so many, but, when one is before the -public, photographs are made constantly of her, and I’ve one of each, -at least. And I’ve kept my press notices, the poems, and all such -things written to me. It’s great fun; one can’t help feeling as if -the whole world were one’s personal friend, though it’s all nonsense, -of course.” Mrs. Garden had talked, skimming over her trophies to -select her point of beginning. Soon she was in full tide of joyous -reminiscence. Win and Mark came in quietly, but nobody noticed them -beyond a careless glance of welcome. Illustrating her stories with -a photograph of herself as a street sweeper, the White Rabbit, the -Easter Bunny, a flower, a bird, a little child, in various childish -employments; young shop girls, dreaming maidens, Juliet, Rosalind, -endless rôles, Mrs. Garden related something funny, exciting, or sad -that had befallen her in each of these characterizations. Her audience -laughed till they were weak; or quivered, sharing her danger; or were -saddened by her long-dried tears. The gifted little lady herself was -in high spirits, reliving her triumphs, seeing again, repeated in this -young audience in her American library, the effects she had produced on -her mixed audiences in the English halls, theatres, and drawing-rooms. -Her voice was gone, but she hummed for them some of her songs, -producing by her perfect phrasing, with the words, considerable of the -effect her singing had made. She recited for them, and the girls could -not contain half their rapture. Her own three girls were entranced. -Jane was wrought up to a frenzy of admiring pride in her. Florimel -could not repress herself and actually cheered one number, carried -beyond remembrance of conventions that forbid mad applause of one’s own. - -Mary broke down and actually cried at the end of a pretty bit of -child pathos. She was completely overwhelmed, and a little aghast, -to discover talent, the like of which her inexperience had never -encountered, shut up in her own mother’s slender body. She felt, as -Gladys Low had felt for her, that it was almost past bearing to have -such a gifted being one’s own mother, living under the same roof. - -Win, first of any one, discovered Anne standing with a tray in her -hands, which she had forgotten, waiting for the end of a recitation, -forgetting that she thus was waiting. - -“You lamb!” exclaimed Anne aloud as her beloved lady ended. And the -words made every one, Anne included, laugh, and this brought the -emotional part of the entertainment to a close. - -“But there’s no end more that I know!” exclaimed Mrs. Garden naïvely, -as she took a lettuce sandwich and welcomed her tea. - -“Let me tell you a secret!” said Audrey Dallas, as she, too, accepted -a sandwich, but preferred the lemonade as the alternative to tea which -Anne had provided. “A New York paper, the _Morning Planet_, takes -items which I send it, sometimes, for the Sunday issue.” - -“Audrey! You _do_! _You_ do!” cried Nanette Hall, with -varying emphasis, but one emotion of amazement. - -“Sometimes, Nan,” said Audrey, laughing. “Will you mind if I write -about your having come back to America, to Vineclad, where you had -lived as a bride, and how you had returned to your career, leaving -your children here? And how you were now resting and delighting your -friends, as you had delighted thousands of the English public? You know -how they always say those things! And may I say that you were known to -the world as Miss Lynette Devon, your maiden name, but in private were -Mrs. Elias Garden, the widow of Elias Garden, LL.D., a scholar who had -lived an exceedingly private life in Vineclad, New York? And then will -you care if I add something about the happiness your talent gives your -neighbours when you are kind enough to entertain them? It wouldn’t -sound like this when I’d written it, you know, but this would be the -material I’d use. Would you mind, dear Mrs. Garden?” - -“Not in the least,” said Mrs. Garden. “It would be rather nice of you, -Audrey--I can’t call you girls Miss; you’re my daughters’ friends, you -see! Then I’d mail copies of that paper over to England, and people -would know I still lived. The London papers could be got to copy it. -Oh, girls, sometimes it tears my heart to know I’m laid on the shelf!” -Tears sprang into Mrs. Garden’s eyes and glistened on her cheeks. - -“Steady, Lynette,” Win interposed. “Just look at the three -jam-and-honey pots you found on the shelf, waiting you here!” - -“Oh, I know, Win; I do know, really!” cried the artist. “And I’m happy -here, truly! But they used to applaud me so, and call: ‘Lynette! Ah, -Lynette, our pet! You can do it, you bet!’ from the galleries, don’t -you know; the boys! And the flowers they sent me and the sweets! And it -was all as if they liked me, the _me_ back of it all, don’t you -know! One can’t help loving all that. But the girls are dear to me, -simply _dear_ to me! Indeed I’m grateful!” - -Mary put her arm around her with the gesture she used when she saw that -her fragile mother was overtired. - -“We don’t ‘like’ you, Lynette, our pet!” she whispered. “We love you, -as all England could never love you.” - -“We don’t send you flowers; we just lay our glorious garden at your -feet,” said Jane. - -“As to sweets and poems and presents, what’s that? Look at us; you’ve -got _us_ here,” Florimel summed up conclusively. - -“We think you have all Vineclad, Mrs. Garden,” said Audrey. “We girls -are simply crazy over you; _crazy_, that’s all!” - -“Quite enough,” interposed Win heartily, tired of this sort of girlish -sentimentality. “You all give Mrs. Garden treacle out of a huge spoon, -the way Mrs. Squeers fed it to the boys in the school. I’ll walk with -you, Audrey, if you’re going home, as I see you’re making ready to do. -I’ve an errand past your house.” - -“Got it up after you knew Audrey was to be here, Win?” asked Florimel. - -“It’s to fetch my shoes, which I left to be straightened by the -shoemaker last week, Miss,” said Win severely. “Not that it would not -be to my credit if I did provide myself with a reason for walking with -Audrey.” - -“With any of us, Win,” said Audrey, almost too unconsciously to be -unconscious. “Of course the shoes will wait.” - -Win feigned not to hear this suggestion; he departed with the girls, to -turn off with Audrey at her corner. - -Mark accepted with alacrity an invitation to stay to tea. - -“I wonder if Audrey acts like that just to make Win want to go all the -more? Couldn’t make me believe she’s plain stupid! Isn’t it fun to -watch ’em? When I’m older, if there’s a boy in Vineclad--they’re not -too plenty, not older ones--I’m going to take in everything that comes -my way,” announced Florimel, cramming a round tea cake into her mouth -in two bites to free her hands for carrying out teacups. - -“You seem to be beginning now, Mel,” Jane commented. - - - - -CHAPTER TEN - -“’TIS BEAUTY CALLS AND GLORY SHOWS THE WAY” - - -The old-fashioned methods of the law office in which Win was reading -law, combined with the complete lack of such cases as required haste -in proceeding with them, made it nearly always possible for Win to -arrange his hours, even wholly to be absent at his pleasure. A Vineclad -law office, _the_ Vineclad law office to be more exact, since the -Hammersley & Dallas firm was supreme in its profession there, would -have horrified lawyers in a large city, yet the knowledge of the law -which Win was gaining in it would be thorough and practical, a fine -basis for whatever he should choose to build upon it when he was older. -There was no difficulty, therefore, in Win’s taking three days in which -to go to New York, buy his sister-in-law’s car, and select from the -applicants who might apply for the position of its chauffeur, in answer -to her advertisement, the one whom his judgment decided was the most -hopeful. - -“If one of the girls could go----” Win checked himself, but there would -not be much use in blowing out a match after it had been applied to oil. - -Jane and Florimel sprang to their feet, and Mary looked up eagerly. - -“But I couldn’t possibly go,” Mary said, instantly aware of her -responsibility as the head of the house, and denying her thought’s -suggestion. - -“Why not Jane, then?” Win hinted, beginning to think that what he had -not meant to say was worth saying, after all. - -“Well, I’d like to know why not Florimel?” demanded that young person. - -“Seniority, my dear, seniority.” Win shook his head sadly. “No getting -away from the fact that you are younger. Besides, Jane has red hair.” - -Jane laughed. “It does seem as though that ought to win me a -consolation prize! Do you suppose I could go, really?” - -“Don’t pretend, Janie! You love your hair, but then we all do!” said -Mary. “Might she go, Win? Where would you stay?” - -“In the park, in the aquarium, in the station house, or, at a pinch, in -a hotel,” replied Win, still unsmiling. “I don’t see why Jane mightn’t -go. I’m timid about going alone--you have to go under rivers and over -houses in New York too much to be unprotected.” - -“Oh, Win, I think you’re lovely!” Jane cried rapturously. - -“So do I, Jane; I’m glad we agree so. We ought to have a great trip, -having the same tastes,” assented Win. - -“It sounds decided!” Jane exclaimed. “Is it? Do you think it is, Mary? -I wouldn’t need more than one little gown to wear in the evening and -some extra shirt waists; just a small suitcase.” - -“If we got the car, plus the driver, we might--we should come home in -it,” observed Win. - -Jane gave a little scream of joy, but Florimel’s desire broke bounds. -“And there’d be plenty of room for me, _plenty_!” she cried, -choking and tripping over her words. “It would be a great deal -more--more proper for Jane and me to be walking around the hotel -together. Who’d be with her when you were seeing cars and men? And Jane -needs some one sensible! Look at the day she went off to see that Miss -Aldine! Didn’t I go with her, and wasn’t it better? Jane and I would -have one room, and I’d just as lief eat half of what I could eat; it -wouldn’t be much more expensive. I’ll use my own money. Why couldn’t I -go, too? Jane’s only two years older than I am. And I’m fully as able -to enjoy a trip, and really a great deal more sensible.” - -“But altogether too modest, Florimel; it’s a pity you don’t see your -own good points,” said Win mournfully. “It isn’t economy I’m aiming at, -child. I couldn’t seem to see myself kidnapping the Garden baby. If you -want to come along, and your mother and Mary and Anne can spare you -both at once, come along. I’d be glad to take you both, and Mary, and -the twin of each of you--if you were twins.” - -“Mary, for goodness’ sake, say quick you won’t mind for just three -days!” Florimel implored Mary, on her knees before her, arms around -Mary’s waist in an instant. - -“I won’t mind for just three days,” repeated Mary obediently. “But----” - -“Stop right there!” screamed Florimel, springing up and catching Jane -in a mad whirl. “Oh, Jane, oh, Jane, how do you feel? We’re going to -New York for an automobile!” Florimel sang as she and Jane danced a -sort of gallop around the room. - -“I want to dance and shriek and purr! We’re going to buy a car and -chauffeur,” Jane continued the doggerel, on a still higher key, as -they started off again. - -Mrs. Garden came running downstairs and Anne hurried in from the -dining-room. - -“What is it? You quite frightened me!” gasped Mrs. Garden, leaning -against the casement of the door, her hand at her side, as she saw that -the girls were at least not sorrowful. - -“I knew it was only Jane or Florimel gone stark mad; it’s both of -them,” said Anne, with the annoyance relief always seems to call forth. -Florimel and Jane released each other and caught their mother into -their embrace. - -“Win’s going to let us go with him to get the car,” announced Florimel. -“Mary says it’s all right----” Florimel stopped, hesitated, fell back, -and looked at her mother doubtfully. “You don’t care if we go, do you?” -she said slowly. “Somehow we never think of asking you things like -that. We shall after we get you looking to us like our mother. You -don’t care? If we go, I mean?” - -“Of course not. And I’d rather you wouldn’t ask me things like that; it -would be embarrassing to betray how little I knew about what was best -for you,” said Mrs. Garden, half pettishly. “I should think it would be -very pleasant for you to go--and an awful nuisance to Win to take you.” - -“Why, madrina!” said Jane reproachfully. “When we’re such good company -and Win has known us so long! The way we’ve worked for that boy and -entertained him! He’s the nuisance. I’ve worked over him for years; I’m -glad that he feels grateful enough to do a little for us!” Jane waltzed -over to Win and took him by the ears and swung his head gently from -side to side as she hummed and danced a slow waltz, in which he had no -choice but to follow her, captured as he was. - -The result of this sudden resolution on Win’s part to escort his -almost-contemporaneous nieces to New York was that they set out on the -second day in high glee, accompanied to the station by Mr. and Mrs. -Moulton, Mrs. Garden, Mary, and Anne. Mark also was of the party and -insisted upon carrying their suitcase. - -“I do hope everything will go right,” said Mary, as the travellers’ -escort walked slowly homeward through the Vineclad streets, pleasantly -shady in the July heat. - -“Oh, Win can’t go wrong, with the car picked out at home! If he engages -an unsatisfactory man, we aren’t obliged to keep him,” said Mrs. -Garden. “How frightfully warm it is! We never have such intemperate -heat at home in England.” - -Involuntarily Mary’s troubled eyes met Mr. and Mrs. Moulton’s, -regarding her kindly. - -“Mary was anxious about the children, not the car, Mrs. -Garden--Lynette,” said Mrs. Moulton. - -“Mary is an anxious little hen in the Garden patch,” laughed her mother. - -“I’m sure I don’t know what could happen to two such great girls as -Jane and Florimel.” - -“Of course nothing could happen to them, with Win another clucking hen, -as bad as I am!” cried Mary, visibly glad to seize upon this reason for -her youthful mother’s refusing to be anxious about the girls. - - * * * * * - -A telegram announcing the arrival of her trio in New York, giving -the address which would connect them by the magic wire with home and -Vineclad, comforted inexperienced Mary by anchoring her thoughts of -them to a definite spot, out of the space which had swallowed them up. - -The four girls--Dorothy, Nanette, Gladys, and Audrey--came to tea one -day; Mr. and Mrs. Moulton invited Mrs. Garden and Mary to tea with -them on another of the three days of Mary’s loneliness. On the third -Chum got a bone crosswise down her throat and it took so long to save -her from imminent death, the adventure was so exciting, that the whole -day seemed filled and curtailed by it. Consequently the time of the New -York visit really did not seem long although it overlapped into the -fourth day. A telephone message came from Win announcing that they were -staying overnight, some sixty miles from home, held up by a puncture -and too tired to press on. - -Mary was up early the next morning, out in the garden to look after her -pets and to make their dawn toilets by pulling weeds and clipping dead -leaves, when a long graceful car, its size unobtrusive because of its -good lines and true proportions, came up the side street, blew its horn -at her several times, by way of salute, and stopped at the gate. - -“Thought you’d be here!” shouted Win, as the engine stopped to allow -him to speak. He sprang down from his place beside the chauffeur and -opened the tonneau door to let out Jane and Florimel, who were pushing -it madly but ineffectively. Florimel carried a basket to which she -clung so devotedly that Mary was at once suspicious of it. In spite -of it, she managed to hug Mary as hard as Jane did, and both embraced -her as if it were she who had just returned, and from a journey of -desperate danger. - -“You old blessing!” cried Jane. “I’ve felt like a pig, a perfect pig, -every minute! The next time I go anywhere you can’t go, let me know! -I’ve been furious to think of it; Mel, too! You just said you couldn’t -go, and we fell right in with it, and you could have gone as well as -not! I’m a pig!” - -“You won’t get another chance to come your unselfishness, Mary Garden,” -Florimel corroborated her sister. “But we had a perfectly scrumptious -time. Where’s Chum, and how’s mother?” - -“Chum’s around somewhere; mother’s well. Chum nearly choked to death,” -replied Mary, holding tight to Win, because she could not get a chance -to do more than look her welcome to him and pat the back of his hand, -which had been Mary’s way of petting Win since she was a baby. - -“No word for the new car, Molly?” hinted Win. “Some car! It brought us -home in great shape; I’ve almost mastered running it; it isn’t hard. -I’m going to teach you three.” - -“Indeed you’re not; not me!” cried Mary. “But it’s a beauty, Win! It -looks even better in the body than it does in the pictures!” - -“Looks better in the chassis, too!” laughed Win. “We made no mistake in -our selection. Captured a chauffeur, too. Come and speak to him. Say, -Mary, he’s a wonder; English, seems an out-and-out gentleman; I don’t -understand him,” Win whispered, as Mary went with him to the gate to -greet this acquisition. - -“Willoughby, this is the eldest of the three young ladies, Miss Garden. -Mary, this is Willoughby, Wilfrid Willoughby, who drives splendidly -and is going to look after us this summer,” Win introduced the new -chauffeur. - -Willoughby bowed; then, as if he remembered, touched his cap with his -forefinger in the groom’s salute. “Hope I may be allowed to look after -you, Miss Garden,” he said, in the unmistakable accent of an English -university man. He wore a close black beard and his eyebrows were inky -black; Mary thought it gave him a queer effect. His eyes were the -bluest blue. - -“Probably has Irish blood,” thought Mary, sorting out her impressions -of him. - -“Take the car around--no; what am I thinking of? Of course Mrs. Garden -must see it. She’s not down yet, Mary?” asked Win. - -[Illustration: “MARY, THIS IS WILFRID WILLOUGHBY, WHO DRIVES SPLENDIDLY -AND IS GOING TO LOOK AFTER US THIS SUMMER.”] - -“No, but I’m sure she’ll not be long. I’ll tell her you’ve come. I’m -so glad you’re back, you three! I wonder what I should do if I had -to be separated from you long? Florimel, what is in that basket?” -Mary stopped and looked reproachfully at Florimel, for the basket -unmistakably wriggled in a most unnatural way. - -“It was lost, Mary!” cried Florimel. “It rubbed up against us in the -street. Jane said we mustn’t let it rub, or its bones would prick right -through, it is so thin. But it will be beautiful when it’s fed and -petted a little while. It was so grateful! Win went into a restaurant -and bought one of those terrible thick saucers, like a scooped-out -cobblestone, and some warm milk, and fed it right in a convenient -to-let doorway, in the street. And it was so hungry it shook so it -could hardly eat, and so grateful when it had taken it all up! We stood -around it, of course, keeping off frights from it. Jane said if we left -it, we’d be worse than the cruel uncles of the Babes in the Wood, for -there wasn’t the ghost of a chance for it, not even of robins covering -it, if it died in the street! And we all said one more in Vineclad, -and this big place, would never be noticed, so we bought this basket -and we took it back to the hotel and smuggled it in, and Win bribed -the chambermaid to help us, and she did, and it has ridden up here as -contented as we were! Even when Willoughby let the car out, to show -what it could do, it never minded a speck! So I knew you’d be glad we -came along and saved one starving thing! If everybody saved just one, -there wouldn’t be one left to suffer! Isn’t that a hard thing to know, -when they won’t do it?” - -“You certainly expect your hearers to sort out sentences, Mellie!” -cried Mary. - -Willoughby, apparently without consciousness that his position forbade -such comment, said: - -“My word, she’s a charming child! We’ve had a great time with Miss -Florimel and her protégée in the basket, coming up!” - -Mary had an instant in which to wonder at this freedom in a -well-trained English servant, as she said: - -“I suppose it’s a cat, Florimel? You haven’t said, you know.” - -“Silver-gray ground colour; broad black stripes!” cried Florimel. “It -will be a beauty. Win pretended coming up he heard the wind rattle its -bones through the basket, and that he thought some one was stoning the -car, but you’ll see what a dream it will be! Say you’re glad we saved -it, Mary!” - -“I don’t have to say that, Mel; you know anybody would be, especially -our sort. Take it in the house--or shall I?--and feed it and butter its -paws--especially feed it. It ought to have a name,” said Mary. - -“It has--Lucky,” announced Florimel, rushing past Mary to take her -sufferer to Anne, to see whom she could not wait another instant. - -Mrs. Garden was dressed and almost ready to go down when Mary called -her. - -“I heard the horn, and knew they had come, and jumped right up!” she -cried. “Do, pray, fasten my gown here at the shoulder, Mary. Am I -properly put together? I’ll never learn to dress myself, and one must -be gowned halfway right to be seen by one’s new manservant. Does he -look all one could ask, Mary?” - -“He looks queer. I don’t mean precisely that; he’s really nice, speaks -like an educated man, but his face doesn’t quite belong to him,” said -Mary, groping for her own meaning. - -“Dear me, how extraordinary!” laughed her mother. “I sincerely hope he -has not been dismissed from his last place for stealing a face! I’m -ready, Mary.” - -Mrs. Garden, who never looked prettier nor more youthful than in the -simple pink and white morning gown which she was wearing that morning, -did not at first see the new chauffeur; her rapture over the car -excluded all other objects. Win drew her attention to the man after she -had rhapsodized over the car. - -“This is Willoughby, the new man, Lynette. Willoughby, this is Mrs. -Garden, who is actually your employer.” - -Willoughby touched his cap with a hand that shook noticeably, though -this time he made no mistaken salute. Mrs. Garden looked him over -languidly, then with a mystified, increasing attention. - -“You remind me of some one,” she said. “Could it be that you drove for -any one I know? Have you been in England?” - -“Yes, madam, I am English,” said Willoughby. And again Mrs. Garden -looked closely at him, a puzzled line contracting her smooth brow. - -“It may be that you drove for one of my friends. I must have you tell -me where you were employed there,” she said. “Mary, shall we try the -car? Have you breakfasted, Willoughby? Then suppose you drive us--Miss -Garden and me--about three miles? Enough to try the car, then you shall -have a second breakfast. Will you come, Jane? Win?” - -“No thank you, Lynette; I must hurry down to the office,” said Win. - -“No, thank you, madrina; I want to see Anne and Abbie,” said Jane. - -So Mary, who had run back to the house for coats and veils, got into -the car with her mother, the chauffeur played with various buttons, and -they rolled away. The car was a model, one of the glories of its first -rank. It bore them along rapidly, steadily, purring softly, obedient to -each suggestion, and Mrs. Garden was in raptures. - -“Have you driven long, Willoughby? You drive perfectly, with caution, -yet certainty,” Mrs. Garden said, as they slowed down after a little -exhibition speeding on a deserted road. - -“I’ve driven since cars were made worth driving,” he said, forgetting -his respectful “madam,” and turning his head with a little toss of it; -his blood was kindled by the swift flight of the car through the dewy -morning. To Mary’s utter amazement and alarm her mother cried out in -surprise and leaning forward touched “Willoughby” on the shoulder. - -“I know you now!” she cried. “Lord Wilfrid Kelmscourt, what are you -doing driving my car, here in Vineclad?” - -“Willoughby” stopped the engine and turned to face the tonneau. “I’m -doing just that, driving your car, here in Vineclad, in New York, in -the United States of America, and I admit it is most amazing,” he said. - -“Why are you wearing those ridiculous whiskers?” Mrs. Garden cried, and -Mary sat dumfounded. - -“I didn’t think you’d find me out, not at once,” “Willoughby” said -plaintively. - -“How childish you are!” Mrs. Garden said, half laughing, yet evidently -annoyed. “Pray tell me how you found me, and why you came here in this -silly fashion?” - -“Miss Lynette Devon--Mrs. Garden--didn’t you order me not to come where -you were again?” asked this extraordinary masquerading chauffeur. “Very -well; I came to America, not knowing you were coming here, because it -was hard on me to stay in England and not see you. I saw an item in a -Sunday paper in New York last week saying you were in Vineclad, New -York; known in private life as Mrs. Elias Garden.” - -“Oh, Audrey’s correspondence!” interrupted Mrs. Garden. - -“Really, I don’t know,” said “Willoughby,” with his strongest Oxford -accent. “In another sheet I saw that you were advertising for a man to -drive your car, that ‘Mrs. Elias Garden, in Vineclad,’ sought a man who -would drive for her and take care of a garden. ‘My word, Wilfrid, my -boy,’ I said to myself, ‘there’s your chance to get into Miss Devon’s -presence and be near her for a few days, at least, undiscovered!’ -I applied for the position, your brother-in-law selected me out of -several applicants--he’s a discerning young chap, that brother of -yours!--and I had the pleasure of bringing up your new car, your two -lovely children--and of seeing you! Lynette, Miss Devon--oh, bother -these names!--Mrs. Garden, won’t you forgive me and let me stay?” - -“As my chauffeur? Hardly, Lord Wilfrid! And certainly not as my guest. -Kindly drive us home and let me speed your departure, after you have -breakfasted with us. If you were determined to disobey my distinct -prohibition to see me again, whatever did you do it for so foolishly? -Why didn’t you call on me, like a sensible man?” asked Mrs. Garden, -with reason. - -“Because I’m not sensible about you! Because I thought this would prove -to what length I was willing to go to get into your presence! Because -it was so unusual, so removed from the commonplace. Doesn’t the romance -appeal to you, Lynette Devon Garden?” Lord Wilfrid pleaded. - -“It certainly does not!” cried Mrs. Garden, breaking into laughter, in -which Mary struggled not to join. - -Without a word Lord Wilfrid reached forward and started the engine. He -seemed to realize that from laughter there is no appeal. In unbroken -silence, but with undiminished skill, he drove them home to the old -Garden house. Mary began to feel that he was in earnest in his feeling -for her mother and, tender-hearted ever, to pity him. She longed to -hear the story of his woes. But, glancing at her mother’s pretty -unruffled face, which looked young and contented under its shadowy -veil, she felt that if admirers were coming to seek her out, titled -admirers from across seas, her hands would be full indeed. How should -she and Jane, not to speak of Florimel, take care of a girl-mother whom -lords sought, when they were all too young to think of romance, except -when it was presented to them within book covers, its aroma one with -printers’ ink? - - - - -CHAPTER ELEVEN - -“HE NOTHING COMMON DID OR MEAN” - - -“Lord Wilfrid,” “Willoughby,” “the chauffeur,” “the nobleman”--Mary -found herself experimenting in her thoughts with the various guises in -which this man should appear in them--drove up to the other gate of the -Garden place and into the driving entrance. Mary guided him; her mother -had wrapped herself in a silence more impenetrable than her motor veil, -but Mary felt sure that she was enjoying herself exceedingly. - -“The lordly chauffeur,” as Mary amused herself by deciding to call him -to herself, stopped the car, shut off the gas, and the engine sank into -silence. He then got out, opened the tonneau door, and handed out the -elder and younger ladies with a courtesy equalled only by his extreme -gravity. - -“You are to come in, Lord Wilfrid,” said Mrs. Garden, passing him up -the steps. - -Mary really felt sorry for him. “He hasn’t done anything except be -foolish, and I suppose that’s to be expected if he’s in love,” she -thought generously. “We have not breakfasted, Lord Kelmscourt,” she -said, with her smile that everybody found comforting. “I hope you are -a little hungry, or we shall be embarrassed; it is late for us, in -summer. We shall have great appetites.” - -Lord Wilfrid Kelmscourt proved no exception to the rule; he quite -brightened as he received Mary’s sympathetic look. - -“I’m not particularly sharp set, Miss Garden,” he said. “We had a good -breakfast, your brother--your uncle, is it? How curious!--and I. But -I’ve no doubt I still can peck a bit.” - -“That’s a suitable thing to do when you’re coming into a Garden -domain!” laughed Mary. “We have such a useful name! It makes itself -into little mild jokes all the time.” She threw off her close straw hat -and brushed up her damp hair, which its pressure had made into small -rings of glossy brown on her forehead. - -The romantic lord, who for romance’s sake was ready to become such an -unromantic person as a begoggled chauffeur, in a long, shapeless coat, -looked admiringly at Mary. - -“Fancy your being Miss Lynette Devon’s daughter!” he exclaimed. “Fancy -her having three such beautiful daughters as she has, and not one in -the least like her charming self! I can’t believe you are really her -child!” - -Mary looked around and saw that her mother had gone on up to her room. - -“Well,” thought Mary loyally, “if she won’t encourage him, at least -there’s no use in letting him think she’s old and undesirable!” “She -doesn’t seem one bit like my mother to me either,” she said aloud. “She -was such a young girl when I was born that she is like another sister, -but one that we all feel we must take more care of than we ever did -of our other two sisters. She is young, of course, but she’s young in -other ways than years.” - -“Quite right, Miss Garden!” Lord Wilfrid agreed heartily. He came close -to Mary, speaking low and earnestly. - -“Don’t you see that I long to take care of her myself? Don’t you think -she needs a man’s protection? You would not oppose me if I tried to win -her, would you? Can’t you see why I took this work to be near her?” - -Mary moved away, nervously longing to laugh yet wishing to be kind to -this strange being. “I can’t help feeling that we can take care of -my mother, Mr.--Lord Kelmscourt. But, of course, if you were fond of -her you’d want to do it yourself. You couldn’t expect us really to be -willing to lose her, now we’ve had her, could you? I’m sure we should -try not to be selfish. And any one can understand wanting to be near -her--but--goggles, Lord Kelmscourt? Wouldn’t almost anything else be -nicer? Goggles look so much like a huge insect! Of course you haven’t -them on now, but when you wore them--they aren’t a bit romantic!” Mary -had kept her face sober while she answered this guest categorically, -but murmuring something about “seeing Anne,” she fairly ran away at -last, to laugh her fill in the hall. - -Here Win came upon her and she fairly clutched him. - -“Oh, Win, I was afraid you’d gone to the office!” Mary cried. - -“Found it was earlier than I thought and that I needed another -breakfast,” Win explained. “What’s up, Molly? Why are your risibles -risen?” - -“Win, he’s not a chauffeur! He’s Lord Wilfrid Kelmscourt; he’s in love -with our little mother! He saw her advertisement and took the place -to be near her--says he thought the romance would strike her! She’d -forbidden him to see her in England, you know. But he happened to be -over here, and he saw her advertisement and applied. He’s disguised a -little; has a beard! Mother knew him almost at once. Did you ever in -all your life hear anything like it? Please take him up to your room to -get ready for breakfast.” - -“Say, Mary, you’re not nutty for keeps, are you? It’s only temporary, -isn’t it? And did they say it was safe for you to be at large? They -often attack their best friends, you know, suddenly! Keep off, Mary, -and explain what has done this?” Win sat down on the reception chair, -back of the door, and held out his hands, palms outermost, fending off -Mary. - -“Oh, Win, dear, don’t fool now!” cried Mary, laughing, but ready to -cry. “He’s in there alone. Do look after him and be polite! He’s a -guest now, and he’s to be sent right away, so do be polite while he -lasts! I have told you; that’s the truth, just as I said it. Please -hurry in, Win; you’ll sort it out when you get there. He’s Lord Wilfrid -Kelmscourt; don’t forget the name.” Mary pulled Win to his feet by his -coat lapels and pushed him toward the room she had just left. Win arose -with a groan and suffered himself to be propelled to his amazing duty. - -“Well, my gracious, as they say in Barrie’s stories: ‘It cows a’! It -certainly cows a’!’ Though I never knew what that barnyard Scotticism -meant, nor do I know what has befallen our family, through this -chauffeur who isn’t one! He must be pretty long-sighted, since they -had to forbid him in England from seeing Lynette over here! I hope -to goodness you’ll get all right again, poor Molly!” When Win had -disappeared through the doorway, shaking his head forebodingly for -Mary’s benefit, Mary fled to find Anne and Jane and Florimel to warn -them what they had to expect from him who had been the chauffeur, and -that he was to breakfast with them. - -Jane and Florimel, Anne, too, in her way, instantly caught fire from -Mary’s stirring tidings. - -“It’s a novel, a play going on right here in this house!” cried -Florimel, her eyes snapping. “What a lark! As long as she doesn’t want -him, isn’t it great?” - -“She probably will want him,” said Jane. “It is like a novel, and in -novels they always relent at the end. We’ll lose her! Lady Kelmscourt -she’ll be! We’ll be presented at court by her. ‘Lady Kelmscourt wore -violet and point lace; Miss Garden wore Alice blue’--that wouldn’t do, -not if the dresses were together! White! ‘Miss Jane Garden wore canary -yellow; Miss Florimel Garden wore rose pink. The young ladies’ court -trains were----’” - -“Jane, for pity’s sake!” protested Mary, covering her ears. - -“Miss Devon had plenty of admirers before she married and came here; -lords, aplenty!” Anne said proudly. But she looked troubled. “It’s not -the same now. She was a slip of a girl then, hardly older than Jane, -and it was all a play to her; didn’t interest her greatly. But now--if -she’s forbidden this Lord Kelmscourt to follow her, and he’s come in -spite of it, mark my words you may lose your lovely girl-mother, and I -my sweet lady again!” - -“Anne, don’t croak!” Mary remonstrated. “We’ve got to be polite to -him at breakfast, and we can’t be if we think he’s going to steal our -little toy-mother! I’m sure he won’t; she meant just what she said.” - -Anne sniffed. “Much you could tell of what a woman meant!” she said. -“Where’s your mother now?” - -“In her room,” admitted Mary unwillingly. - -“Making herself bewitching! What did I tell you?” cried Anne. - -Mrs. Garden floated into the dining-room in a perfectly irresistible -gown, which none of her daughters had seen before. It was all foaming -pinks and white, with irruptive lace and bows of three shades of pink -nestling in it, and it had an absurd cap to enhance it, that looked, on -Mrs. Garden’s soft light hair, as if she had brushed against the dawn -and a bit of a pink and white cloud had clung to her head. - -“Does look as if Anne were right! If she isn’t, it’s rather mean to -make it harder for him,” Jane whispered to Mary, while Lord Wilfrid was -helping Mrs. Garden to her chair with a look that proved the wonderful -morning costume not lost upon him. He, too, was wonderfully transformed -by shaving and the loss of the disguising beard. - -Mrs. Garden was sweetly gracious, a charming hostess. She smiled upon -Lord Wilfrid and asked about acquaintances they shared in London, how -his mother, Lady Kelmscourt’s eyes were; she hoped they were better. -Whether his sister, the Honourable Clara, had long felt ill effects -from that ugly fall from her horse? And whether her darling little -boy, Ralph, was growing strong and big? - -The Garden girls could not eat much for listening to these familiar -quotations from novels, as the talk sounded to them, and also feeling -that they were taking part in private theatricals. But Lord Kelmscourt -seemed to consider it all perfectly natural, as indeed it was, for -acquaintances meeting after separation ordinarily inquire for common -friends; it was an accident that these people bore titles which made -them seem unreal to the three Vineclad maidens. Mary noted with -satisfaction that Lord Wilfrid did not eat like a blighted being. -He did full justice to the excellent breakfast, undaunted by its -predecessor of that morning. - -Breakfast over, Win hesitated, looking painfully embarrassed. He did -not want to betray his knowledge of what Mary had told him, that his -sister-in-law had ordained that this genuine and attractive Englishman -was not to remain her guest. On the other hand, Win did not want to -leave the house without bidding him good-bye. Mary alone noticed that -Win was in a quandary, and was turning over in her mind ways of solving -his difficulty, when Lord Wilfrid ended it. - -“Are you off, Mr. Garden? You said before breakfast that you must -hasten to the office; I gather that you are reading law? Now my -disguise has proved so flimsy that your sister penetrated it -immediately, and I must return to New York. I should be glad if I might -linger in Vineclad, but the decree has gone forth I must also go forth! -Awfully glad to have met you, Mr. Garden; hope to see you again. When -you come over, look me up in London, if we don’t meet here. I had a -delightful drive up here with you and the little girls--I beg their -pardon: the young ladies! Here’s my card; that club will always give -you an address to reach me.” Lord Kelmscourt shook hands with painful -heartiness, clasping Win’s hand till it hurt him. - -“Oh, I think I’ll see you again here; I hope so,” Win could not help -saying, with unmistakable sincerity. He thoroughly liked this man, -whose forty years should have been a barrier between them, but who was -forty years young, and companionable to the youth of not much more than -half his age. - -“Shall I see your young brother-in-law again in America, Mrs. Garden?” -Lord Wilfrid appealed to his hostess openly. - -“It would be quite like you,” she said with a smile. “But if you do -come to Vineclad again, pray come in your proper person.” - -“No objection to that, as long as you do not find my proper person -improper,” laughed Lord Wilfrid, evidently relieved at not receiving a -stern prohibition to return to Vineclad in any guise. - -Win got his hat, Lord Kelmscourt went out to the door, and here the -elder and younger man shook hands and said good-bye all over again. - -“Nice boy,” Lord Wilfrid said, turning to Mary, who happened to be near -him. “Though, speaking of your uncle, I suppose one should call him a -man!” - -“He’s only a half-uncle, my father’s half-brother. It’s the other half -that is a man; at home Win is only a dear big boy.” - -“I’m going immediately, Mrs. Garden,” said Lord Wilfrid, as Mrs. Garden -joined them, anticipating her possible orders. “Before I go, please -show me your garden.” - -“Come, Mary,” said Mrs. Garden, but Mary’s heart failed her when she -remembered that Lord Wilfrid had not seen her mother for a moment, -except in the car and at the table. - -“I’ve got to find Jane, madrina,” she said, blind to her mother’s -appeal to be supported. And she ran away not a little perturbed. For -perhaps Lord Kelmscourt would seize the chance which she had given -him, and plead his cause, and perhaps Mrs. Garden would relent! Mary -trembled to think that her girl-mother might go the way of girls, and -leave her new-found daughters desolate. - -When, an hour later, Mrs. Garden and her guest returned to the house, -Mary, Jane, and Florimel, watching anxiously behind the closed blinds -of the upper hall, clutched one another jubilantly. Lord Wilfrid looked -serious, far from glad, and their mother was as blithely unruffled as -ever. - -“Poor lord!” said Jane, with a revulsion of feeling; she had been -hating the stranger with all her dynamic force. “She’s held on to her -orders, and made him go back to New York! Of course I’m thankful, but -you can see he isn’t.” - -“Well, I think it’s perfectly great to have a lover, provided you send -him off! I like something like this going on in the house, as long as -it goes the wrong way--for him,” declared Florimel. - -Mary and Jane were convulsed over this speech and responded to their -mother’s summons to bid Lord Kelmscourt good-bye with lips that would -twitch, and with cheeks reddened by amusement over Florimel’s original -views of a romance. - -“Good-bye, Miss Garden, good-bye, Miss Jane Garden. Good-bye, Miss -Florimel Gypsy! We had a pleasant trip, we four, in the car, didn’t -we? I’m sorry not to teach you to drive it, Miss Jane. Mr. Garden will -do that. I hope to see you again. I’m to be allowed to visit Vineclad -before I sail for home, ‘if I like.’ Do you think I shall not ‘like,’ -Mary?” Lord Wilfrid said, not noticing that he had dropped his more -formal address to Mary, won by the kindly blue eyes in the sweet young -face smiling at him. - -“I’m sure that you will come and that we shall all be glad to see you,” -said Mary. - -“You dear girl!” said Lord Kelmscourt, with a farewell grip of Mary’s -soft hand that underscored his words. - -Mr. and Mrs. Moulton came over to Hollyhock house that night, as they -usually did, to sit in the garden, now rioting with midsummer bloom, -for the beneficent hours of the first darkness after a warm day. They -heard the story of the disguised chauffeur with the amusement that -the girls knew that he would feel, on Mr. Moulton’s part, and the -impatience which they were equally sure his wife would feel. - -“Such nonsense!” she cried. “I’m glad you sent him right about, -Lynette!” - -“Oh, but he will come back!” protested Mrs. Garden mischievously, swung -to the other side by this injudicious remark. - -“I think he was a trump!” said Mark, who always came when the Moultons -did, and just as surely when they did not. “He’s got the right idea; -better be original, if it isn’t too sensible. You’ve got to remember -him now, and talk about him, and maybe that was what he was after.” - -“Well, Mark!” exclaimed Mrs. Moulton. “Where did you learn your wisdom?” - -“Tell you some day!” laughed Mark, flushing. - -That night the three Garden girls got together in Mary’s bedroom and -sat down in their white nightgowns to a serious talk. - -“It isn’t so much that I think madrina will marry this lordly -chauffeur, but the thing is she isn’t safe! Some one else will see her -and fall in love with her, just as the girls have, just as we have! -For she was a total stranger to us, just as much! I’ll never feel -easy again--though Chum is getting to be a watch dog!” So spoke Jane, -rocking herself comfortably on the floor, with a foot in each hand, -wrapped around in her gown, and her glorious hair shining around her. - -Florimel stretched herself across the foot of Mary’s bed, holding up -her arms to let the breeze blow up her flowing sleeves. “It would be -bad enough if you or Mary were grown up and--if you were grown up, and -anybody noticed it, and--and liked you, Jane,” she said delicately. -“But, well, I do hope madrina won’t be too pretty--for us to keep, I -mean.” - -“I think Lord Kelmscourt is nice, really very nice,” said Mary. “I -think, here in Vineclad, where everybody is either old, married, or -uninteresting, and half the time all three, madrina will be safe -enough, if she doesn’t care for the lordly chauffeur. I must say he is -really nice; Win thinks so, too. And being English, madrina may enjoy -being Lady Kelmscourt more than we can think. I’m frightened, that’s -the truth, but I won’t worry. If it happens I’m going to like it, -however I don’t!” Mary checked herself with a laugh at her own heroism. - -“What a thing it is to have a pretty little toy-mother! It’s a great -responsibility!” said Jane, jesting, yet in earnest. “Three maiden -ladies and their caged linnet!” - -Florimel bounced over to the head of the bed with a movement so swift -that she seemed to lie at both ends of the bed at once. “How do you -suppose she got on in England, while we were little?” she asked, and -after this sensible and pertinent suggestion there was nothing to do -but to go to bed. The meeting was over for that night. - - - - -CHAPTER TWELVE - -“AND LEARN THE LUXURY OF DOING GOOD” - - -Jane came upon Florimel, busy with Chum on the lawn. - -“I don’t think either of them likes it, but it’s good for them, teaches -them patience and makes them accomplished,” Florimel volunteered for -Jane’s benefit as she came up. - -“Them? Who besides Chum?” asked Jane, looking around. - -“Oh, my! He must have run into the currant hedge!” cried Florimel. “I -meant Lucky. I was teaching him to ride on Chum’s back. He sticks on -pretty well, but he hates it. Sticks too well; his claws rather annoy -Chum.” - -“I don’t know why they wouldn’t!” Jane sympathized with Chum. “I see -Lucky’s nose poking out under there, to see if it’s safe to come out. -Do let him alone, Mel! You bothered Chum’s life out, and now the cat -has no peace. Such a pretty cat as he’s turned out!” - -“Didn’t we know he would?” triumphed Florimel. “Those black stripes on -his silver colour are so stylish! If I do torment them, Chum and Lucky -like me better than any one; don’t you, Chum pup?” Florimel hugged Chum -breathless and the dog plainly was ecstatic over her condescension. -“I’m teaching Lucky to come when I whistle, like a dog, only not the -same call I use for Chum. Watch!” Florimel whistled two notes, repeated -like a bird call, and Lucky, whose added flesh and beauty proved his -name suitable, came pleasantly to her, not with any of Chum’s joy at -being noticed, but with a slow, condescending courtesy. “He’s the -Prince and the Pauper, all in one, like Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” -cried Florimel, snatching Lucky to her breast and eagerly scratching -his chin to win a purr. “He was the pauper, and now he’s the prince, -and you’d think he had been the President and his cabinet, and lived on -the best the White House could give him all his life! He likes me lots, -but he knows I’m just as lucky as he is to be allowed to save him. I -don’t care! I like to be snubbed--by a cat! See this act.” - -Florimel set Lucky on Chum’s back, ordered Chum to “Get up!” and for a -glorious six or seven feet of distance Chum served Lucky as his steed, -to the disgust of both. Then the cat growled and sprang off, this time -galloping to the house with tail a-hoop, resolved not to be cajoled by -a whistle again to do what he despised, and Chum wagged her whole body -apologetically, reminding Florimel that, though she objected to circus -performances, it was the cat who had broken bounds. - -“Mel, little madrina longs for a chauffeur,” said Jane. “She says no -matter how well you and I could drive, she’d never ride with either of -us, and Win can’t give up the law altogether. Where shall we get a man?” - -“I think we’re both learning beautifully, Janie!” said Florimel, in -an injured tone. “I haven’t done a thing wrong since the day I went -into the garage without putting down the brake--and the brake was -spelled another way, by the wind-shield and the wall! You’ve got to -do something like that to start with; they all do! You haven’t done -anything yet, but you may; you drive better than I do, though. You -don’t seem a bit red-haired when you drive, Jane, honest! You’re -just as quiet and clear-headed, you’re not afraid, and you’re not -reckless--not smarty-cat! I think you drive plenty well enough for -madrina to trust you, if you take a little longer training.” - -“Much obliged, Mel, for your compliments,” said Jane. “It’s nice of -you to say all that, when you want to drive so badly. I think, myself, -I’d be safe driving here in Vineclad, but if madrina’s nervous, she’s -nervous, and that’s all there is to be said about it. It seems to me -madrina’s painfully quiet lately; I’m afraid she’s getting tired of -it--_tireder!_ It must take a while to realize one’s voice is -gone, and the further you get into realizing it, the worse it is, of -course. We thought--Mary and I--that we ought to find a man to-day, but -‘that’s all the further we got,’ as Abbie says.” - -“Let’s get out the car and drive all around for ten miles, on every -side, blowing the horn, with a sign standing up on the back seat: ‘Man -wanted to run this!’” suggested Florimel. - -Mary came running out of the house. “Janie, Florimel! Abbie thinks, -maybe, she knows a man!” she cried. - -“I doubt it!” Jane promptly commented. “Abbie doesn’t look as though -she would know one, ever; she looks as though she’d slaughter one if he -were introduced to her.” - -“She doesn’t know this one, personally,” Mary admitted. “But she has -just thought of somebody named Joel Bell who might answer. She is sure -he doesn’t know how to drive, but she says he’s fine at general work, -especially gardening, and madrina wants that, too. Abbie thinks this -Joel is bright, and could learn to run the car. There’s one thing -certain: he could wash it!” - -“What happens?” asked Jane, knowing Mary and that she had a plan. “Do -we go out in the car hunting him? Do you suppose he’s a boojum snark? -If he is, there’s no use hunting him.” - -“We are going this evening; madrina would like to go with us. Win will -take us, some of us--all of us, if we want to go, of course. I thought -it would be nice to take Abbie, as long as it’s her exploration. She -doesn’t have much fun,” said Mary. - -“Fine to take Abbie, Molly darling! But if she goes it’s a good thing -it’s a seven passenger car. Her sixth is equal to two fractions,” Jane -remarked. - -“I would never imagine that madrina would take a man to train as a -chauffeur! I’m already considerably trained, and she’s afraid with me. -She ought to have a good driver, else why not trust to Jane?” - -“Jane can’t repair punctures, change tires, nor pump them up. Madrina -feels safer with a man; I do, too, Janie; if you don’t mind? There’s -something in seeing a man’s hands on the wheel that gives you a sense -of security. Perhaps it’s only because men have held steering wheels so -long! Yet muscle does count.” Mary looked her apology to Jane. - -“If any woman could be a more reckless and generally good for nothing -driver than some men!” exclaimed Jane disgustedly. - -“Janie,” said Mary, lowering her voice and glancing toward the house, -“madrina is so blue! I came upon her crying her heart out a little -while ago. She would not tell me what was wrong, but I heard her trying -to sing before that, and her voice is quite, quite gone! It’s the first -time she has done more than hum. She couldn’t sing at all!” - -“No need of asking why she cried, then!” said Jane, with a quiver in -her own voice. “I thought she was sad lately and I wondered if Lord -Kelmscourt had anything to do with it. Of course she didn’t have to -send him away, but his coming must have brought back her old life to -her.” - -“Well,” said Florimel, with an expression that might have suited a -maiden in the Roman Colosseum, with the lion pit just opened before -her, “if madrina wants the lordly chauffeur, not to drive for her but -to travel with her all the rest of her life I, for one, am not going to -make a fuss. I thought I couldn’t stand it to have her marry him and go -away again, even if we did visit her; we’d not go to England for good -and leave our garden. But I will stand it; I’ll write him, myself, to -come back, if she’s sorry she made him go.” - -“He’s coming to Vineclad before he sails. Madrina isn’t so silly! She -wants to sing. Can’t you see, Florimel, how fearful it is to be what -she was; and then to be nothing--oh, I don’t mean that! The dear, -little, charming madrina! But nothing the world knows about; just the -Garden girls’ mother!” cried Jane. - -“We all see, Janie,” said Mary sadly. “I’ve been thinking. Isn’t there -something, some charity, for which we could raise money?” - -Jane and Florimel stared at her. “Vineclad is pretty comfortable, you -know; not much chance here to work for charity,” said Jane slowly. -“Why, in all this wide world, did you say that, Mary? You’ve something -in your brain; I know you!” - -“You can’t know me very well, if you don’t think my brain is empty, -Janie,” laughed Mary. “I was thinking that if we could get up an -entertainment, for an object--you can’t seem to have entertainments -just to entertain!--madrina might be interested. She could give some of -her impersonations, in those costumes the girls were so crazy about, -and she could train the girls--be deep in it, in all sorts of ways. I -believe it would be good for her.” - -Jane and Florimel were in raptures. “For all of us!” they cried -together. - -“Oh, Molly darling, what a good head you’d make for a sanitarium! You’d -know just what to do for every single thing that ailed people!” added -Florimel. - -“It can’t be hard to know what any one needs when your thoughts are -almost inside her mind; you love her so much, and long so to make her -happy,” said Mary. - -“Glad you like my notion! The thing now is to find a Worthy Object.” - -“A Worthy Object that won’t object unworthily?” suggested Jane. “We’ll -find one, my Mary! If we have to burn down some one’s house and set -the family down beside the road, with only one stocking apiece--and -amputate the other legs!--we’ll find some one to whom we can give our -proceeds!” - -“If I drive the car maybe I could run over the head of a family,” said -Florimel hopefully. “I can’t steer very well yet.” - -“You’d be more likely to wreck your car to save a chicken!” laughed -Mary. “The head of the family would have to be taken off and rolled -right under the car for you to hurt it, soft-hearted little Mel!” - -“My heart might be all right, and my hand all wrong,” retorted Florimel. - -“We’ll ask Mr. and Mrs. Moulton and Win to find us something to give -money to.” - -That evening Win brought around the great car and Mrs. Garden and Mary -persuaded Florimel to join them in the tonneau, to let Win carry on -Jane’s education in driving a little farther. Jane sat with Win in the -front, and the middle seats were occupied by Anne and Abbie, Anne’s -tall and bony structure counterbalancing Abbie’s unwieldiness. - -“Win, we are to drive ‘entirely northward,’ Abbie said,” Jane -explained, her voice covered by the engine from the hearing of the -others. “We go to the edge of Vineclad, ’most to the next town; Joel -Bell lives in the country.” - -“All right, Janie; catch hold of the wheel and change places with me. -You’re to drive and find this Bell. What a lot of bother it would save -if he were the kind of bell that kept ringing, as long as Abbie doesn’t -know precisely where he lives,” said Win, holding the wheel steady over -Jane’s head as he stood up to slip into the other seat. - -The pleasures of the chase were added to the enjoyment of the lovely -drive in that exquisite hour between sunset and summer starlight. - -Joel Bell proved illusive--Mary said perhaps he was a diving bell. At -last they found some one who could tell them where to go, and they made -the last stage of the journey carefully, for it was a neighbourhood -perfectly capable of throwing tire-wrecking substances into the -road. Joel Bell proved to be a melancholy person. His melancholy was -justified when it developed that his wife had died some months ago, -leaving him with three small Bells to be taken care of and provided -for. The trouble was that poor Joel could not provide for them, if -he took care of them, for earning money and staying at home were not -compatible. - -“I know a real smart girl, young, but old enough to take care of -children like mine--the baby’s most two--if I could afford to hire -her, but I can’t, so what’m I to do?” he demanded. “There ought to be -some place in Vineclad where you could dump little children while you -worked, same’s I hear tell of elsewhere.” - -“A Baby Dump, sometimes called a Day Nursery! There’s our Object!” -cried Jane, stretching her slender neck backward to make Mary hear. - -“Are there enough people here who would use such a place, Mr. Bell?” -asked Mary, leaning over the door of the car with her sympathetic eyes -on Joel Bell’s melancholy face. - -“’Round here they is,” he said, looking at Mary with the frankest -admiration. “There’s a mill right near here; lots of folks work in it, -men and women; they’d get on better if they had some such dumpin’ place -to leave their babies. An’ a kind of a dispensation would be good, run -along with it.” - -“A dispensation? From school? The children wouldn’t be old enough for -that,” said Win, feeling his way toward enlightenment. - -“Land, no! I don’t see what you mean,” said Joel Bell, mystified in -his turn. “A dispensation where they’d get medicine free, an’ maybe a -doctor’s overhaulin’.” - -“Oh, of course! Why didn’t we think of that?” cried Mary hastily, -afraid Win would heedlessly correct Joel and tell him that he had meant -to say dispensary. - -“Well, well!” Mrs. Garden cried impatiently, having no clue to why this -need of the neighbourhood should interest her three girls as it did. -“All this is quite wide of the mark! We came to offer you a position -in my employ, my good man. I am told that you know enough of gardening -to be useful to us, and, if possible, I want you to learn to drive -this car. Get the young girl you spoke of to look after your children, -and you will find yourself much better off than you have been, I’ll -warrant.” - -“Dear me, if madrina only wouldn’t call Abbie ‘my good woman!’ and this -man ‘my good man!’ I’m sure they hate it,” thought Mary, aghast at -this imperative manner of dealing with the difficult native American -temperament. - -“Do I understand that you’re a-askin’ me to work for you, ma’am?” asked -Joel Bell. - -“You see, Mr. Bell,” Win interposed, “it’s this way: Mrs. Garden is -nervous about driving with her daughters alone; I am busy all day, and -she wants a trusty man to learn the car and to look after our big old -garden. Maybe you know it? Hollyhock House, on the opposite side of -town, rather outside it? On Picea Street?” - -Joel Bell’s face glowed with unexpected enthusiasm. “I should say I did -know the old Garden place!” he cried. “Are you Winchester Garden, that -they call Win? Never once suspected who ’twas! I know a considerable of -gardenin’, but cars ain’t in my line. Maybe they’d come to me, though. -Would you make it wuth my while to accept your offer, ma’am? I’d have -to hire a girl for my off-spring.” - -“If you can learn to drive and take care of the garden, both, I’ll -give you--fourteen pounds, was it, Win? Seventy-five dollars a month, -did you say, Win? If you can’t drive, perhaps we’d keep you anyway, at -about forty dollars or so,” said Mrs. Garden carelessly. - -Joel’s eyes shot a gleam of triumphant joy, which his pride instantly -recalled. “I’ll think it over, ma’am,” he said nonchalantly, “an’ let -you know in a day or two. To who do I feel indebted for recommendin’?” - -“Don’t know to whom you do feel indebted, Joel,” laughed Win, thinking -it about time Mr. Bell came off his pedestal. “But it is Abbie Abbott, -here, who told us of you.” - -“_In_deed!” said Joel, bowing as if he were acknowledging an -introduction. “An’ t’ best o’ my knowledge an’ belief I never met the -lady before now.” - -“You didn’t! But my cousin Lemuel Abbott, the plumber, told me ’bout -you,” snapped Abbie, unbearably annoyed by her own embarrassment at -this extreme gallantry. - -“Better close the deal now, Joel; we shall not care about coming again -to see you,” advised Win, seeing that Joel needed less than no time for -consideration of the offer. - -“Well, I might try it, s’long’s you need a man,” Joel said graciously. -“I’ll be taken on as a gardener, till you learn me to shofer real good. -I’m poor, but I’m straight; I wouldn’t take wages I hadn’t earnt.” - -“Right-o!” Win approved him, as Mrs. Garden, entirely at sea as to how -to deal with this unknown type of servant, murmured something about -this being satisfactory. - -“Move on, Janie!” said Win, watching Jane manipulate the starting -button and the gas. “Turn on your lights before we start; you’ll need -them to drive.” - -Joel watched her also, with admiration that included reassurance. -“Seems as if I could do what a little red-headed girl could,” he said, -in all sincerity, without intending to be impertinent. - -When the car had brought them all home again, under Jane’s handling, -“without one bit of help from Win this time!” she triumphantly reminded -her family, the girls huddled together in the hall and in animated -whispers discussed the suggestion they had received. - -“It seems perfectly ridiculous to establish a Day Nursery in Vineclad,” -said Mary, anxious to do so, but equally anxious not to make their -charity absurd. - -“But Joel knows!” Florimel said aloud, immediately clapping her hand -over her lips. “He knows a great deal besides, but he must know that -neighbourhood.” - -“Win told me coming home that Hammersley & Dallas had once had some law -case to settle near there, real estate quarrel, and that there were -hardly any Americans over there. There are poor Italians, and some -Hungarians working in that mill. Fancy, in Vineclad! We don’t know our -own town across its width!” said Jane. “We’ll get up an entertainment -for a Day Nursery and a--‘a Dispensation’ for the little youngsters -over there. It’s all right, Mary; it must be needed if that man says -so. But I’ve often noticed that almost any object is all right, enough -excuse, I mean, if people want to have an entertainment.” - -“I’m sure we don’t want it ourselves!” sighed Mary. - -“No, indeed! No fussing for me! I’d rather stay outdoors; summer’s -short enough!” Jane confirmed her. - -“Well, I don’t know!” said Florimel. “We’ve been outdoors all -our lives, in the garden, summers. I’d like to do some perfectly -gloriumphant stunt, if madrina could train me to, something that went -with a zip!” - -“That’s the way it would go if you did it, even if it was sitting -fishing in a pond where there wasn’t one fish to bite!” declared Mary, -rumpling Florimel’s black hair and laughing as she shook her lightly -and kissed her hard. - - - - -CHAPTER THIRTEEN - -“WISE TO RESOLVE AND PATIENT TO PERFORM” - - -“Now, small madrina,” said Jane, coming into the library where her -mother sat before the hearth upon which Mark was laying a fire in -deference to the cool dampness of the evening; “you are to be told -something, and implored something, and you must be very, very good and -ready to say yes to a polite beggar.” - -“I’d be surer to say yes to a rude beggar, because I’d be afraid of -him,” Mrs. Garden said. “Please don’t ask me to go on a picnic, Jane; I -loathe picnics.” - -“Not a picnic in my possession!” declared Jane. “But that’s mind -reading! How did you guess I had any sort of festivity in my mind?” - -“Jane, if I dared permit myself an ancient bit of slang, I’d say I’d -no idea you had festivities in your mind, that I thought Vineclad -festivities were all in your eye! I’ve been here over two months and -the gayest times I’ve seen were our own garden party--and that was -nice--and some depressing teas. I do wish I dared hope your festivity -were festive!” - -“Madrina, we’re going to get up----” - -“Well, it’s encouraging to hear you’re the originator of the affair, -Jane,” Jane’s mother interrupted her energetically. “You are my -daughters; more likely to think of something I’d enjoy. Tell me!” - -“We are going to get up something, we don’t know what; we’re counting -on you to tell us, to raise a little money for the Day Nursery that -Joel Bell said was needed over there. Don’t you think we ought to?” -Jane tried to look noble. Her mother laughed and Mark applauded with -the tongs. - -“In all truth, my dear, I don’t think you could raise enough for the -nursery, but no one could approve more heartily than I of the attempt,” -Mrs. Garden said. “Haven’t you, really, thought of an entertainment? -Because I have! I’ve been thinking of it a good deal lately. Shall I -tell you? It’s original. Anything at this time of year ought to be held -out of doors, don’t you think? Would it matter that we used our garden? -I mean do we seem to emphasize the garden too much? It is so lovely, so -big and suitable to almost any purpose.” - -“You couldn’t have said anything we’d like to hear much better than -that, madrina,” said Mary, slipping into the room behind her mother’s -chair and laying her hands on the shoulders which persisted in -remaining thinner than the Garden girls liked to see them. “We hoped -you’d love our best friend and dearest possession.” - -“Of course I love such a garden as that!” cried Mrs. Garden. “Here’s my -idea of a nice, perfectly new kind of party: Invite your guests--since -it’s to be for charity, sell tickets instead--to meet their friends, -of all ages and conditions. Select certain people to be the actors -and distribute among them just as many characters as you can; as you -can costume and get well taken, that means. Each character would wear -a number in a conspicuous place, and wander about the gardens, which -would be hung with lanterns and made as pretty as possible in every -way. Some of the actors would represent several characters; they -would wander about for a certain length of time in one costume, then -change and reappear in another. Some of your helpers would have more -talent than the others and could enact more rôles. The--I wonder if -one should say audience in such a case? The guests not acting would -be provided with small pads and pencils, the pads headed with the -words: ‘I Met’--followed by numbers down the side of each page, as -many numbers as there were characters represented. The guests would -write against each number the name of the character--his guess of -the character--bearing that number. Prizes would be given for the -three most accurate lists in order of merit--first, second, and third -prizes, and a consolation prize, if you wished. The actors would be -required to enact their parts as well as they could, and to answer -questions--trying, of course, to give baffling answers--put by the -guessers to elicit their identity. We should alter and add to this -programme as we came to experiment with it, I suppose. Don’t you think -it might be made perfectly charming? All these prettily costumed -creatures wandering around under the lantern-hung trees, singing, -reciting, doing whatever the characters demanded done? And mightn’t it -be lots of fun?” - -The girls, Florimel, too, and Win, now added to the group before the -fire, had listened to Mrs. Garden’s description of her idea for a -summer evening’s revel without interrupting her, but with glances at -one another expressing their satisfaction. - -“Madrina, it’s great!” cried Jane, first, as usual, to find her voice. - -“It would be beautiful, really beautiful, if we could do it as it ought -to be done,” said Mary, doubt and desire in her voice. - -“Well, I want to be Lady Macbeth!” cried Florimel, which desire, -accompanied in its expression by a jump from her low stool and a -pirouette most unsuited to tragedy, raised a shout of laughter. - -“We’d call the entertainment ‘the Garden of Dreams,’” Jane announced. - -“Janie, what a happy label!” Mary said. “My one fear, madrina mia, is -that we couldn’t carry out your lovely programme, but if you train us, -I suppose we might.” - -“Of course I’ll train you! And take any number of characters myself. -Shall we make out a list of characters? Get pencils and paper, -Florimel, please, and we could set down the names of the actors--your -part of it, girls!” Mrs. Garden was all animation, youthfulness flowed -into her and flashed from her. Her children exchanged satisfied -glances; already their plot was a success. The advertised object of the -entertainment was not their object; the Day Nursery was incidental. -What mattered was that their plaything mother, growing dearer to them -and more of an anxiety each day, should be kept interested and happy. - -“Now that our future voters have spoken,” said Win, “might a mere man -say that he thinks this a suggestion worthy of a better cause? Also -that a Day Nursery in the neighbourhood proposed for it would be a -da-go nursery? Also to ask where you’d get costumes, and what you think -your proceeds would amount to, if you hired so many costumes, decent -enough to be seen at close range?” - -“Oh, Win!” Mary’s distressed voice surprised Win, who lacked the clue -to her eagerness not to have her mother’s suggestion wet-blanketed, “we -can make most of the girls’ costumes, and it wouldn’t cost much to hire -a few for the men.” - -“Why, Winchester, I have a whole chestful of costumes among my boxes,” -Mrs. Garden triumphed in her announcement. - -“What may I be?” Mark asked meekly, having been listening and not -talking. - -“Mark Twain!” Mary almost shouted this happy discovery. “Mark Two, you -know! You have thick hair; we’ll comb it out bushy, and powder it, and -you can wear a white suit! That would be fine, for one thing! Too easy -to guess, but some must be easy.” - -“I thought little Jack Horner would fit me; I’ve pulled out a plum in -Mr. Moulton--also a peach, in Mrs. Moulton, too,” Mark said sincerely. - -“Perhaps Jacky was really a good boy, and was right when he said it, -and that’s why he got the plum,” said Jane slyly. - -Mark smiled at her. “I thought I ought to be Richard Third,” he said. -“He was lame, wasn’t he? I could don a hump. He’s not an attractive -gentleman.” - -“Was he lame? He limped on the straight and narrow path, Mark,” -commented Win. “But lame is too big a word for your tiny drop step, -Mark!” protested Florimel. - -“Drop step? That’s a new one, Florimel! Quick step, sick step, drop -step--goes like a door step!” laughed Mark, who sensibly refused to be -sensitive about his slight lameness. - -“Is the meeting adjourned, with a resolution to hold the Garden of -Dreams festival? Because Abbie was making us grape juice sherbet when I -came in. She said she thought we’d be about uncomfortable enough from -our fire to want it later on! And we are pretty warm and miserable for -people who were chilly, aren’t we?” Mary arose as she spoke and went -toward the door to let Abbie know that the hour for sherbet had struck. -She laid her hand, with a caressing touch that suggested a benediction, -on her mother’s head as she passed her. - -“Happy, little Lynette-madrina?” she asked, without pausing for an -answer. - -Mark stirred in his chair and turned his eyes upon the fire to hide -from the others the look that he was himself conscious had sprung into -them as he had watched Mary’s betrayal of her sweetness; to hide also -the moisture that often rose to them when this happy Garden family -reminded him that, though his days were now filled with friendly -affection, he had no one whom he might claim his own. - -The Vineclad girls, when they heard of the Garden of Dreams, were -ready to give the Gardens, mother and daughters, the adulation which -grateful children pay--or should pay--to fairy godmothers, who turn -the pumpkins of this work-a-day world into chariots, and make the -most secret longings of youthful hearts come true. Never before had -it befallen them to impersonate the heroines of romance, clad in -picturesque garments, trailed blissfully through fairy scenes. It -was not a simple task to apportion the characters. Not only must they -be given to the persons best fitted physically to assume them, but a -perfectly successful impersonation involved mental sympathy between the -real and assumed individuals, else bearing and movements would be out -of accord. When it came to fencing to ward off the guessers’ questions, -which must be answered, betrayals would be inevitable, unless each -actor understood the character he, or she, portrayed sufficiently to -reply correctly yet misleadingly. The Vineclad boys were dubious about -the whole thing; they had a common misgiving among them that walking -about in costume would “make them feel like fools.” There were a few -who took kindly to the idea, seeing it in its true light, as informal -drama, but in the main the older men were impressed into service for -the masculine characters, which remained in the minority. Mr. Moulton -developed amazing enthusiasm for the dressing-up game, unexpected, and -the more delightful in him. He volunteered to assume the rôles of blind -Milton, if Mary would walk with him as Milton’s devoted daughter, Mary; -Sir Humphrey Gilbert, for whom Mr. Moulton, it seemed, had a secret -admiration; Merlin, out of Tennyson’s Idyls, and King Cophetua, with -Florimel as the Beggar Maid. - -“It’s perfectly scrumptious of you, Guardian!” said Jane. “We never -dreamed we could get you into it--and four times! It must be all those -plants you work over springing up in you and making you blossom out!” - -“A botanist ought to enjoy transformations, an elderly man ought to be -glad to be rejuvenated, and we are all secretly inclined to the drama, -my dear,” Mr. Moulton answered her. “This notion of Lynette’s strikes -my fancy; I leaped to the bait of one night’s youthfulness; that’s all.” - -“Nothing to apologize for, Mr. Moulton,” said Mary. “You are to have -four rôles, then, and Mark four--Galahad, Alexander Hamilton--we think -Mark looks a little like him--Clive Newcome, Kim. And Win will be Mark -Antony--I don’t see how anybody can be sure which Roman he is, when -togas were so fashionable!--Robin Hood, The Last of the Mohicans, -L’Aiglon--in a gorgeous satin costume!--and Oliver Goldsmith. If only -you three could be in as many places at once as you can take parts -we’d seem to have an army of men! That short Dallas boy, Fred, is to -be Little Tommy Tucker, crying for his supper, and Phil Ives will be -Barnaby Rudge, with a stuffed crow they have, a pet crow he was before -he was stuffed--as Barnaby’s raven, on his shoulder. It will really -be good. We have George Washington, tall Mr. Bristead, and Agamemnon, -king of men, will be Mr. Hall, because he’s so huge. Goodness only -knows what he’ll look like if he wears a Grecian costume! And Mr. Low -wants to be Falstaff--with pillows to fill him out--and he will act the -part well. There are other men characters. Tiny Nanette Hall is to be -Little Miss Netticoat, in a white petticoat! That will really be dear! -A straight little candle costume, a red flame wired up on her head, and -a fluffy white skirt, like a candle shade! The girls are ready to take -as many parts as we can dress.” - -“I’m to be Brünhilde,” cried Jane, “on account of my hair. And Joan -of Arc, and the White Lady of Avenel, and the Red-haired Girl in ‘The -Light that Failed,’ and Lady Clara Vere de Vere, and Snow White--as -many more as they like! Madrina is going to teach me the ‘Willow Song,’ -and I’m to be Ophelia, but that’s a secret! I’m crazy about it.” - -“Most suitable to Ophelia; it promises well for your acting the part, -Jane,” suggested Mr. Moulton. “And Mary?” - -“I’m to be your Beggar Maid, Cophetua’s,” cried Florimel, not hearing -his question. “And Katharine Seyton, in ‘The Abbot,’ and Madge -Wildfire, and Cleopatra, and Lady Babbie, in ‘The Little Minister,’ -and Topsy--black face! Burnt cork! Goodness, what fun! And a Spanish -dancer; Carmen, we’ll call her.” - -“I’m Mary Milton, with you,” Mary then got a chance to say. “And -Ruth Pinch, and Dinah Craik, in ‘Adam Bede,’ you know, and Florence -Nightingale, and Madam Butterfly, and Pippa--the Pippa who passed. I -like that one, an Italian peasant dress, and just go happily along -singing softly: ‘God’s in his heaven and all’s right in the world.’ -And madrina wants me to be Mother Hubbard, in a nice, little tucked-up -gown, with Chum following me around after a bone. But I’m afraid -the crowd would be more frightful to Chum than the bone would be -attractive. You never could imagine the lovely things madrina will be -and do! She’s going to wear about seven of her costumes. We’ve got to -find names for each part. People can’t guess, it wouldn’t be fair if -she were just ‘A Child’; it must be some particular child, and so on. -But we can arrange that. Madrina is so happy over it, Mr. Moulton! She -isn’t a bit lonely now.” - -“Own up, my Mary! You are not doing this for a charity in the first -place, but for your mother’s sake--or perhaps you think charity should -begin at home?” Mr. Moulton accused Mary, a hand on her shoulder. - -“Madrina must not dwell on her lost voice, dear Guardian,” said Mary, -with a deprecating look. “Do you think Mrs. Moulton could be persuaded -to represent Cinderella’s godmother? We could have a dear Cinderella -group if she would.” - -“I think nothing short of chloroforming her and setting her up, -unconscious, to fill a lay figure’s rôle could get my wife into -anything distantly resembling tableaux, or amateur theatricals!” -laughed Mr. Moulton. - -“I suppose I knew that,” sighed Mary, then smiled, dismissing her -regret. “We’re terribly rushed rehearsing; madrina is training some -one every minute. I’ve got to go now, Mr. Moulton. I need practice as -Pippa.” - -It was perfectly true that the Garden girls were “terribly rushed -rehearsing.” The Garden of Dreams took on nightmare aspects at times, -it required so much anxious discussing, so much actual hard work, added -to which the heat of August, sultry and heavy, made hammocks alluring -and naps hard to ward off. But on the whole even the unexpectedly -arduous preparations were enjoyable, Mrs. Garden was in her element, -and the outlook was all for success. One important happy result had -already been attained from the mere rehearsing of the Garden of Dreams. -Jane had developed under her mother’s training such instinctive talent -for the dramatic singing required to accompany impersonations that Mary -and Win were amazed, and Mrs. Garden was greatly excited. At first the -excitement seemed to hold something of regret; it would have been hard -to say whether Jane’s mother was glad or sorry to find her second child -inheriting her talent, intensified. - -“Jane, why Jane! You are extraordinarily good at this!” she cried. “You -act well, really _well_, you know! And your voice! Your voice is -going to be better than mine ever was! Jane, Jane, what can you mean -by it? You can sing and I cannot! Your life lies all before you, and -mine is over and done with!” She dropped into a chair as she spoke, -and burst into weeping, great sobs tearing her slender form, her thin -shoulders heaving. - -Jane flew to her, with a distressed glance over toward Mary. - -“Little girl-mother, don’t mind, please don’t mind!” Jane begged, on -her knees before her mother, gathering her shaking little body into her -firm young clasp. “I’ll never sing a note unless you want me to; truly -I won’t! And don’t you see your life isn’t over and done with if I can -do this? That’s nonsense, of course; I mean your life being over when -you seem younger than we girls! What I meant was about the singing. If -I could sing, if I have a voice, it came from you, and when I sang it -would be you singing still, through me. It would be beautiful, I think, -if it were so, because then you would go singing on and on, when you -thought you’d never sing again! If I sang you could say: there’s my -dear voice that I loved so and never expected to hear again! Jane’s -taken it out to exercise it for me! And when you wanted to sing, you -could say: Jane, use my voice for me; I want to sing ‘Good-bye, Sweet -Day,’ or whatever you would sing that special minute. Couldn’t you feel -that way about it? It would be so lovely! But if you’d rather, I’d -take a clam vow right away and keep it, never to sing any more than a -clam does, humming in my bed--do clams sing in their clam beds, do you -suppose?” - -Mrs. Garden’s moods were beginning to be less amazing to her girls; -they changed with darting rapidity, swinging from despair to laughter -at a word. Now she sat up and laughed, a little tremulously, but still -she laughed, drying her eyes and hugging Jane with a funny childish -little chuckle. - -“Jane, you’re a farce comedy! No wonder you act well--which is not the -same as behaving well, miss! ‘A clam vow’ is an entirely new sort! And -I certainly do not want you to take one. I see precisely what you mean -by your voice being my proxy, my little glowing-haired poet, Jane, -and it can be true; it _is_ true; we’ll make it true! What dear -children you are, all three of you! Mary, sweetheart, don’t look so -troubled! It was bad, downright bad and wicked of me to cry like that. -I’m happy now, truly. It was just a minute of wickedness! I felt as -though I couldn’t bear it to hear Jane singing at less than half my -age, and to know I was silenced forever! It isn’t that I’m not glad -Jane can sing, but that I’m sorry that I can’t! But Jane found the -word to the enigma; she has shown me how to be glad, and I _am_ -glad! I’ll let you use my voice, Janie, just as long as you want -to--or as long as you can! People can’t always sing as long as they -want to, my dear! And I’ll try to remember it is mine, not yours. I’m -going to train you just as well as I know how; you must not sing much -for two years. Then you shall be taught by better masters than I. I’m -delighted! My voice, that I loved best of all earthly things, is not -gone, but is transferred. And here’s another thing, children: if I had -not come home when I could no longer use my voice I should never have -known that it had been smuggled into the states--for I’m certain you -didn’t pay the duty on it, Jane!” - -“Not a penny, madrina!” declared Jane, with a glad look at Mary. This -was the first time that their mother had spoken of her return to -Vineclad as “coming home.” - -“I think it was brought in, past the customs officers, in a baby’s -shirt, and that they never noticed it, for I’ve had it ever so long, -and when I found it, it was under a little soft shirt you put on me -without noticing it, either; I believe you thought it a little squeaky -squawk.” - -From this hour there was a change in Mrs. Garden; she seemed happier, -and her eyes followed Jane with new interest, she threw herself into -the preparations for the Garden of Dreams with new zest. Jane’s -brilliant beauty, her delicate grace, her luminous pallor, her radiant -hair seemed to enthrall her mother, now that she had found them the -casket of her lost voice. For Jane’s pretty fancy took hold of her -mother’s imagination; it was plain that she was beginning to feel that -her voice actually did live on in Jane, and to be comforted by the -thought. Mary was still her mother’s comfort, her sweet reliance, as -she was every one’s, but in Jane her mother seemed to find her own -reincarnation. - -Thus, with new pleasure and enthusiasm, the rehearsals for the -entertainment in the Gardens’ old garden went on toward its perfecting. - - - - -CHAPTER FOURTEEN - -“OUR ACTS OUR ANGELS ARE, OR GOOD OR ILL” - - -Vineclad bought tickets to the Garden of Dreams without stint. It -had never suspected its own need of a Day Nursery, not even in its -poorer neighbourhood, but it more than suspected its need of being -entertained, and it aroused to seize its opportunity. - -“It will take more than Joel Bell to restore the garden after the -entertainment,” said Florimel ruefully. - -“Oh, no!” cried Mary. “We wouldn’t have it if we thought so! Vineclad -will keep to the paths and the grass, and the grass will spring up in -the first rain, if it does get trodden down slightly. Little madrina, -go away and rest; you look tired and you mustn’t be tired to-night, not -the stage manager, costumer, dramatic and singer teacher, and leading -lady!” - -“Why, I am all these things; isn’t it so, Mary?” cried Mrs. Garden, in -childish glee. - -“And little toy-mother besides! Come along, little porcelain lady, and -get rested,” said Jane, putting her arm around her mother’s willowy -waist and drawing her along. - -“Jane found the word, Florimel; Jane always does!” cried Mary. “Our -mother is just that, a little porcelain lady! I’ve been trying to think -ever since she came what it was that she made me want to say, and it’s -Austin Dobson’s line: ‘You’re just a porcelain trifle, belle Marquise.’” - -“Don’t know it,” said Florimel, too preoccupied to be interested in -poetical labels and their suitability. “Can’t you come and see, once -more, if all my costumes are right, Mary?” - -“I have a few last stitches to take on my Florence Nightingale dress; a -red cross to sew on, and the cap isn’t right. I’ll do it in your room -and look yours over at the same time, though we have made sure of yours -over and over, Mellie,” said patient Mary. - -To do Florimel justice she usually aroused to see Mary’s readiness to -serve when her hands were more than full. She did so now. Throwing her -arms around her in a hug that was more expressive than considerate, she -cried: - -“You dear old Mary-Job, you! Why don’t you say: ‘Get out with you, you -selfish little black gypsy! I’ve got enough to do to attend to myself. -Besides, you’ve been attended to! And, _besideser_, nobody will -look at a snip like you when Jane and I are around!’ But no! You tell -me you’ll ‘look me over again’ while you sew your own things--at the -eleventh hour! But you won’t; I’ll ask Anne. Only she wouldn’t know! -I’ll get Jane--if I can. I’m always vowing I won’t torment you, Molly -darling, but you’re so unselfish you spoil me!” - -“What nonsense, Mel! As if I didn’t just love to fuss over you! Come -along,” Mary insisted, and, in spite of her protests, Florimel was only -too glad to go with her. The Garden of Dreams was to begin at half-past -eight; now, in August, the dusk was deep enough at that hour to allow -effectual lighting of the myriad lanterns which everywhere were to -illumine the old garden. - -The spectators--that was not the word for them, either! Those who had -purchased tickets allowing them to take part in the game of the evening -came, for the most part, early. - -Mrs. Moulton proved to be far more useful in her own -proper--exceedingly proper--person than she would have been could she -have been persuaded to appear in costume in the Cinderella group. The -players had but the cloudiest notion of what was expected of them. -Mrs. Moulton, acting as hostess, or a reception committee of one, -supplemented the boys who gave out pads and pencils. She explained -that the players were expected to set down the names of the characters -whom, later on, they would meet wandering in the garden, each name -opposite the number on the pad corresponding to the number which would -be conspicuously worn by the actor; that they had the privilege of -asking questions from the actors, intended to draw forth clues to their -impersonations, questions which the actors were obliged, by the rules -of the game, to answer, but only if they were capable of being answered -indirectly. For instance, if one met a girl with a crook one would not -be permitted to say point blank: “Are you little Bo-peep?” compelling -the bereft shepherdess to answer: “Yes.” - -As the darkness dropped down over the garden, warm, fragrant, heavy -with August dew, it absorbed and gave back the delicious blended odours -from the garden: cedar and juniper and box, white lilies, alyssum, -mignonette, monthly roses and hardy tea roses, heliotrope, sweet peas, -pungent marigolds, phlox, nasturtiums, and many more living jars of -fragrance, uncovered to the sky as perpetual incense, and blended with -the tonic scents from the herb garden, sage, savory, marjoram, thyme, -and all the rest. - -While the lantern-lighting was in progress the old garden filled with -arrivals; no one was late, every one was curious to see what awaited -them. There was a small but excellent little stringed orchestra, -imported to Vineclad upon Mrs. Garden’s insistence; she would not -listen to suggestions of less competent musicians to supply the music. -The pulsating harp strings, the poignant sweetness of the violins and -viols, the accents of the mandolins emphasizing the flowing melody with -their metallic tinkle, filled the garden with music as suited to the -fragrance-laden dusk, the lantern lights twinkling everywhere, as the -birdsongs in the morning would be suited to the young light of dawn. - -As the guests strolled through the beauty, admiring it, yet speculating -on what was to follow, there began to wander through the paths other -figures, each in costume, fantastic, pretty, or ugly, but always -suggestive, and each of these figures wore on his breast or upon hers -a number, or, sometimes, this number was worn upon the arm, when the -design of the costume did not permit it upon the breast. - -The first of these impersonations were not particularly hard to guess. -Jane, as Joan of Arc, with shield and sword and a rapt look on her -intent face, for instance, was obviously the Maid of Orleans, and so -beautiful that it was clear why her soldiers would follow where she led. - -“Little Miss Netticoat” also was easy to guess, though one of the -prettiest figures of the evening. But there were many baffling -impersonations; some hard to guess because they were so definite, -plainly representing a particular and unmistakable character which -eluded memory; others equally hard to guess because they were so -indefinite. A continental uniform, for instance, might cover the -representative of Washington, or of any of his generals, and a lady -in a formal court dress of a hundred and twenty-five years ago might -be almost any one in France, England, or the newly evolved Western -republic. - -The game grew exciting on both sides, actors’ and guessers’. Questions -flew through the air, as hard to dodge as shrapnel. The hard-pressed -actors were confronted with posers, relentlessly assailing them, backed -up by a pencil, ready poised over a pad, to set down the name which a -careless, too hasty answer might betray. - -“It isn’t fair!” cried Florimel, driven into a corner in her Carmen -costume by rapid-fire questioning of six people at once, drawn up -before her. “What a lot of you to think up questions and only one of me -to answer them! It’s worse than setting limed twigs for crabs!” - -But Florimel was hard to entrap; her nimble wit was at its best, -excited as she was by the marvellously good time she was having. -Brilliant Florimel’s dark hair and eyes, and white and crimson cheeks, -made her such a glowing picture in her pretty costumes that she could -not help knowing what a success she made and having a good time in -proportion to it. - -Audrey Dallas proved helpless under fire of cross-examination, but -Win’s legal training, or quick wit, or both, stood him in good -stead in answering correctly, but not relevantly. He therefore made -Audrey’s defencelessness a pretext for hovering near her, slyly to -hint misleading answers to her. Even though Audrey was supposed to be -looking toward college with an eye of single purpose, the Garden girls -were sure she was not sorry that her inability to parry questions kept -Win at her side. Win was quite well worth looking at in his various -rôles, and laughter followed at his heels wherever he and Audrey went. - -Sweet Mary was lovely as Milton’s daughter, guiding the poet’s steps. -Mr. Moulton made a good foil to her fresh loveliness in his black -scholar’s gown, though Mary told him that he “looked more like William -Dean Howells than John Milton.” - -Later in the evening Mary, as Ruth Pinch, charmed and puzzled every one -by bustling through the paths, in evidence of being busy, dressed in -an old-fashioned flowered muslin, with short sleeves and round neck, -and carrying in her hand a yellow mixing bowl in which she stirred -hard with a kitchen spoon, to represent Ruth Pinch’s famous “beefsteak -pudding.” - -Yet of them all, players of the game and actors in it, none was -happier, prettier, more charming, none as successful in acting as Mrs. -Garden. Costume succeeded costume, as rôle succeeded rôle for her, -assuming a wide range of characters, each as perfectly sustained as -the other. As Ariel she flitted along the paths so lightly that she -conveyed the sense of flight. As the White Rabbit, whom Alice knew, -she hopped along with sidewise, timid glances, for all the world like -a magnified bunny. As Blue-eyed Mary, of the old song, she wistfully -vended flowers, slow of step and drooping with fatigue and hunger. -As the Marchioness she flaunted herself pertly in rags and with a -smutty face, carrying her cribbage board, ready for a game with Dick -Swiveller. And as Little Miss Muffet she was incredibly childlike and -lovely in a Kate Greenaway costume, carrying her bowl and spoon on her -way to look for a tuffet to sit on to eat “her curds and whey,” and -murmuring a little song under her breath, like a rhythmic chant of a -happy child. - -[Illustration: “THOSE WHO KNEW HER BEST WERE AMAZED AND A LITTLE -STARTLED”] - -“She’s perfectly wonderful!” Vineclad agreed. Even though there were -Vineclad matrons who felt Mrs. Garden’s talent was unsuited to the -mother of three big girls, however young a mother she might be, still -they all agreed that she “was wonderful.” - -The most beautiful picture of the evening, the impersonation longest -remembered in Vineclad, was Jane as Ophelia, however. Jane threw -herself into her part with such self-forgetfulness, such enthusiasm, -talent so extraordinary in so young a girl, that those who knew her -best were amazed and a little startled. All in white, with her masses -of red-gold hair falling around her, crowned by a wreath of old-time -garden flowers, intertwisted with long sprays of wild flowers, which -straggled downward and mingled with her marvellous hair; her pale face -uplifted, her eyes set with an unseeing look in their dilation; her -hands holding up her apron filled with flowers, which she lifted and -dropped, and lifted again, sometimes kissing them, sometimes throwing -them from her; singing the Willow Song from Othello, and singing it -with a voice as pure and true as it was high and sweet, singing it with -an abandonment of grief that proved Jane’s talent, for she had not yet -reached the sixteenth of her happy years, and understood heartbreak -only through her intuitions, Jane glided on through the garden paths -toward the fountain. No one stopped her to ask a question; she could -be none other than Ophelia, mad. Conversation died out, the murmur of -voices everywhere was silent, as the guests fell into groups to watch -this enthralling young loveliness pass, and to listen to the pathos of -her despairing song. - -“She’s more than I ever would have dared to dream of being!” cried -Mrs. Garden in an ecstasy. “She can soar higher than I could ever have -climbed; she is an artist! Think of her now, but fifteen! Oh, I’m so -glad, _glad_, that one of my girls is Jane!” - -“And you can be just as glad that only one is Jane,” retorted Mrs. -Moulton dryly. “She’s a dear girl, very fine and dear; I don’t mean -that she’s not, but I do mean that the old-fashioned talents, like -Mary’s, make everybody happier than Jane’s cleverness can--not -excepting, indeed, first of all!--their possessor.” - -“Jane is devoted, generous, unselfish, as well as clever,” said -Mrs. Garden. “Of course I know you think so. I appreciate Mary, or -appreciate her as well as I am able. I realize that no one can sound -Mary’s depths in as short a time as I’ve known her. But you must let me -rejoice in having one artist daughter, Mrs. Moulton, please! It is such -a great thing to be a true artist!” - -“I doubt that it makes a woman happier. I want Jane to find her -happiness in simple things--for her own sake. Don’t foster an ambition -for a career in her, Lynette,” Mrs. Moulton urged. - -Mrs. Garden laughed. “I fancy it wouldn’t alter anything, dear Mrs. -Moulton,” she said. “Jane will find her own level. Do look at her, -kneeling by the fountain! Would you not be sure it was a deep, dark -pool, and that she was going to her mad death? Ophelia ends there; they -must all guess it. But what a child!” - -“They” did “all guess it.” There was the silence that is the truest -applause for an instant, then the garden rang with shouts of: “Ophelia! -Ophelia!” to the accompaniment of clapping hands. - -Mary had urged that Joel Bell be bidden to bring his children to see -the festival which he had, indirectly, suggested. The three little -Bells were small, in varying degrees of smallness, down to the baby, -who, Joel had said: “Was ’most two.” They ranged from her up past -another girl of four, to the boy, who was six. Tucked away in a -safe vantage corner for seeing, unseen, the three small Bells had -bewilderedly watched many things and people which they could by no -means understand, had enjoyed the music, but had finally settled down -to adoration of the lanterns swaying in the breeze, as the crown and -glory, the wonder and beauty, beyond all the other beautiful wonders -which enveloped their awe-struck minds. The baby was too young for her -awe to strike lastingly deep. Several times she escaped her sister’s -and brother’s competent vigilance and sallied forth from their post, -only to be caught and brought back, her protests muffled, not soothed, -by firm little hands clapped over her wide-open mouth. - -Just at the end of the entertainment, when those appointed to the task -were getting ready to collect lists from the guessers, count up correct -entries after the numbers, and award the prizes for the three best -lists, Nina Bell, the baby, still wide awake when the two older little -Bells were getting muffled by sleepiness, saw her chance and escaped -once more, this time successfully. She toddled along, her covetous eyes -on the swinging lanterns quite beyond the reach of her hands, but not -of her ambition. - -“Everything comes to him who waits” is more or less true. Small Nina -had been waiting all the evening to see one of those luminous bright -things close by. As she went wistfully along the path now, a cord from -which a line of the lanterns was suspended dropped from the farther -branch to which it had been attached and fell at her feet. - -Here they were, not one but eight glowing, queer flowers thrown by kind -fairies to her fingers! With a crow of joy Nina stooped clumsily--for -stooping still involved for her a drop on to her hands rather than -a bending of her body--and began to examine her prize. They were as -satisfactory, seen at close range, as they had been at a distance. -Suddenly, however, as she poked and prodded them and lifted one, they -altered. They were no longer flowers, with a single heart of flame -in each; they were blazing from one to the other, and Nina held the -cord. Instantly her own short white frock blazed with them. She gave a -frightened scream. Then some one caught her, held her close, threw her -down, beat out the flames with bare hands and rolled the little body in -the grass, lying close over it. And this was Mary Garden. - -By a coincidence Mary’s final rôle had been Florence Nightingale; -she wore on her arm the Red Cross of the hospital as she flew to the -child’s rescue, no one else at the instant near enough to render aid. -With sure presence of mind and recklessness of her own danger, Mary -beat out the flames enveloping the little creature, and saved her! But -her own dress was a thin white cotton material, she wore a thin white -apron, and her deep cuffs and collar were thinner than the regulation -cuffs and collar of the nurse. In saving the child Mary’s costume -caught fire. Though she threw herself upon the ground it was not -smothered. Win ran to her, his face distorted with agony, in his hand -a coat from some one’s continental uniform. Mark rushed after him, not -keeping up, for the halting foot impeded him and he hated it as he -had never before hated his impediment. He had snatched up a rug which -Mrs. Moulton had been standing on all the evening; with it he made his -best speed toward Mary. All the other men ran toward her when the alarm -spread, but Win and Mark reached her first, and they wrapped her in the -coat and the rug, tearing from her the flaming garments beneath them -which threatened her. - -The cries of little Nina had turned attention in that direction; to -this alone Mary owed her chance to live. Only her outer clothing, her -dress and apron, caught at first; help reached her before her inner -garments had led the fire to her tender flesh. Yet, fight as they best -could, with many hands hastening to help Win and Mark, the blazing -materials could not be extinguished till Mary was badly burned. She lay -in merciful unconsciousness upon the grass, the dark rug and blue and -yellow coat enveloping her, her sweet face unmarred, as her head in a -hollow of the grass let it turn up, white and drawn, to the star-strewn -sky. - -“What an end to our evening!” groaned Mr. Moulton, raising Mrs. Garden, -who had fallen, half fainting, beside Mary upon the grass. - -“Now I shall go mad; not act it!” Jane said fiercely, and Win turned -to put his arm around her. Jane violently threw him from her. “Don’t -any one dare to try to comfort me. Mary! Mary!” she screamed. - -The love between these two sisters was especially close and strong. -Mary heard Jane’s cry and her eyelids fluttered. - -“It’s all right, Janie,” she murmured. “Hurts--a--little. Don’t--worry.” - -“Take her up, boys, as carefully as you can, and carry her into the -house. There’s no time to lose getting a doctor. Any one sent for one?” -said Mr. Moulton. - -“Mr. Dallas went, in his car, tearing!” said Anne Kennington, who -had come from the house, and now knelt, kissing Mary’s shoes, where -she thought her touch could not hurt her. “My lamb, my lamb! My Mary -sweet!” she sobbed. - -They raised Mary, and the lifting brought her back to full -consciousness and to agony. But though it wrung their hearts to give -her pain, no one could save her from suffering. If only they could save -her life! - -The little procession passed Florimel in a faint at the corner of the -path. Mrs. Moulton lingered to attend to her. Mrs. Garden, hardly able -to walk, was helped homeward by Mr. Moulton. Jane walked, erect and -ghastly, with great dilated eyes, a white, set face, and her masses -of hair gleaming under Ophelia’s mad wreath. Win and Mark, with two -other young men to help them in case their arms weakened, carried Mary -slowly, as carefully as they could, but she moaned at every step. - -Thus in pain, and with tragedy threatening, ended the beautiful evening -of the Garden of Dreams. - - - - -CHAPTER FIFTEEN - -“FRAGRANT THE FERTILE EARTH AFTER SOFT SHOWERS” - - -Mary’s injuries were serious. “Not necessarily dangerous, but decidedly -serious,” Doctor Hall explained to the tortured Gardens. - -“May be dangerous?” he echoed Jane’s question. “Surely, Jane. It all -depends upon how Mary progresses. It is perfectly possible for her to -develop dangerous symptoms. It is for us to do our best to prevent it. -Mary is so unselfishly loving toward you all that I believe she will -not give you pain in this! It wouldn’t be like her! In any case, it -is something to rejoice over that the flames did not lick her sweet -old-time face. Mary always has looked to me like an old daguerreotype.” - -Jane turned away with impatience hard to restrain. Doctor Hall had been -their physician as long as the Garden girls could remember, longer, but -Jane did not want to hear him speak of Mary’s face. She did not want -him to speak of anything except Mary’s condition. There was nothing -left in the world to speak of nor to think of but that; all else -was maddeningly unreal and intrusive. Mary lay wrapped in bandages, -motionless, and, except for a few words feebly spoken occasionally, -silent, patient. They did not know whether she slept most of the time, -or lay enduring, weak, yet strong in submissive patience. The doctor -said that there could not be a better patient. Mary gave herself up to -being taken care of with the complete resignation that best coöperates -with science and nursing. - -Mr. Moulton had insisted upon a nurse for Mary, though Jane and Anne -begged to be allowed to take care of her, promising entire obedience to -Doctor Hall. But Mr. Moulton knew that it would be too hard upon those -who loved her to dress Mary’s wounds. The nurse, kind, interested, -faithful, was installed; Jane, Anne, Mrs. Garden were spared seeing how -dreadfully hurt their beloved girl was. - -For that Mary was a beloved girl to all three her danger proved. -Anne’s devotion needed no proof; Jane’s adoring love for her sister -had begun when she, the little baby, watched the big baby--for they -were babies together--and wriggled to her as soon as she could -creep. Florimel paid Mary the worship of a little sister for an older -one, a tempestuous nature for a calm one, a generously ardent heart -for one who deserved its best love. But now that Mary lay like the -pitiful mummy of herself, now that the house was sadly deprived of -her pervading unselfish presence, Mrs. Garden showed how closely this -eldest daughter had grown into her love. - -Jane prowled all day long, and the greater part of the night, up and -down the hall, just beyond Mary’s door, or lay prostrate on the floor -in the next room, her ear against the wall to catch a sound. Florimel, -always restless, sat for hours on the top step of the stairs, clasping -her knees with her hands, also listening, listening, all day long -listening. Anne often joined Florimel here; Abbie came at intervals -to ask: “Anything?” Then to go solemnly away, disappointed by the -inevitable “No.” Win frankly gave up all attempt to work or to study -during these days. He marched up and down the garden, often with Mark, -whom Mr. Moulton released from duty. Indeed the older man was utterly -unable to go on with his great book. - -“What difference can it make about the flora of New York State, if -our sweetest blossom is stricken?” he demanded, drawing fiercely on -his extinguished pipe. Mrs. Moulton sat throughout these anxious days -holding her hands, restraining nervousness by a great effort, wholly -unable to accomplish any task. - -All this was to be expected, for Mary was dearest of all earthly things -to each of these, even to Mark, though no one but himself knew this. - -But Mrs. Garden became Mary’s mother in full as she waited, watching, -praying, fearing, to know whether she might keep her. No longer was she -the Garden girls’ “little toy-mother,” as they had caressingly called -her. She could not change her nature and become, suddenly, strong in -body and dependence. All her life she must be the petted, reliant -creature which habit had made her, but she proved that she could love -her child and suffer keenly in the dread of losing such a daughter as -Mary was. She it was who sat beside Mary’s bed, ceaselessly watching -her dear face for a contortion of pain, or for a clue to a wish, or for -the smile with which Mary tried to cheer her troubled family. - -“I’ll be all right, little mother,” she said feebly one day. “Why don’t -you go to drive? You are always here. Did that baby--is the Bell -baby--better?” - -Mrs. Garden knew what the word was which Mary could not bring herself -to say. “The Bell baby was not badly burned, Mary. You saved her. She -has suffered merely surface burns. She is in bandages, but not hurt as -you are! Oh, Mary darling, and you are so much more valuable!” Mrs. -Garden could not repress the cry. Mary gave her the ghost of her own -smile. - -“You mean you all love me best! You can’t tell about value. The Bell -baby may do fine things before she is eighteen. I’m glad she is -living,” Mary managed to say. - -“You saved her life. I never expect to save a life in all my own life! -A whole chime of Bell babies couldn’t ring the peal you do, Molly -darling!” said Jane, who had come into the room. - -Mary smiled at her, a better smile than she had heretofore achieved. - -“Prejudice!” she whispered. - -Slight as this encouragement was, Jane went away cheered. Surely taking -interest in the Bell baby and discussing comparative value of lives -must mean that Mary was better! Yet after this the fever which the -doctor had feared set in and Mary grew worse. At times she knew no -one, but begged unbearably to be taken home to her “dear old garden,” -or implored for Jane, Florimel, or Anne, as the case might be. She -never recalled her mother in her delirium, and, though Mrs. Moulton, -moved to pity for the girlish mother for whom she had secretly felt -a little contempt, carefully explained that Mary’s mind turned back -to her not-distant childhood, in which her mother had no part, that -it was not the Mary of that summer forgetting her, Mrs. Garden was -not consoled. Finding herself excluded from Mary now by her voluntary -absence from her as she grew up, showed Mrs. Garden, as nothing else -could have shown her, that the loss of her little girls’ childhood was -a heavy price to pay for the honour the world had heaped upon her. - -“Rain, rain, rain!” Mary moaned. And again: “Rain, rain, rain!” -repeated over and over, thrice each time, sometimes for a weary hour. -Occasionally the lament was varied by the cry that Mary’s garden “was -burning up.” - -Jane knelt and said clearly, close to her ear, hoping that she might -understand: “Mel and I take care of it, Mary dearest. It is watered and -all right.” - -But Mary’s head moved, distressed, and she repeated her trilogy: “Rain, -rain, rain!” - -There had been a drought of some weeks, the garden was suffering under -it, although Joel Bell attached the hose to the garden reservoir and -watered it. Joel was in utter anguish of mind over the disaster through -which his child had so nearly died and Mary, perhaps, was to die for -her. - -“’Tain’t in nature not to be glad Nina May Bell is saved, but, my soul -an’ body, you’ve no sort of an idea how I feel about your girl bein’ so -bad hurt for her,” he repeated. - -Doctor Hall said that it might be that a rainfall would benefit Mary. -In her delirium she plainly mingled the suffering of her burns with the -remembrance of the drought that parched her beloved blossoms. She was -so sensitive, he added, to atmospheric conditions that she might be -harmed by the dryness in the air. - -After this Jane and Florimel watched the sky for a cloud as the -shipwrecked sailor in the desert island of fiction scans it for a sail. -On the third day after Doctor Hall had said that rain might help Mary -toward recovery, they saw the fleecy heads of clouds in the west, white -at their base, golden in the summer sunshine on their tops, the clouds -which look as if one could plunge into them and fill the hands with -their masses, the clouds which presage thunder. Later in the day the -sky darkened into a metallic, cloudless sheet, blackened in the west to -murky thickness, with a hint of yellow. - -“It’s coming, madrina! Do you really think it will matter to Mary?” -Jane implored. - -“Oh, Jane dear, how can one tell? And I’m dreadfully afraid of -lightning!” Mrs. Garden cried. These days of awful anxiety had told on -her; the little woman looked wan and thin. It was the first time in her -life that she had ever been called upon to live intensely and to face a -real grief. - -The storm broke with swift fury and raged till it had had its will of -Vineclad. Then the electrical forces marched on, leaving behind them -the steady, refreshing, permeating rain that the garden begged for, and -for which its lover, Mary Garden, deliriously prayed. - -As if Doctor Hall had been right, Mary sank into silence after the -rain set in and, for the first time in several days, lay still. The -beneficent rain fell quietly all the rest of the day and all night. -The garden revived under it, its betterment visible from the windows, -and Mary slept, with its gentle lullaby playing on the piazza roof -and window panes. The Gardens dared not be glad, yet relief sounded in -each voice in the household. Mr. and Mrs. Moulton and Mark, coming over -through the blessed wetness, plucked up heart a little. Mr. Moulton -alluded to his book for the first time since Mary was burned. If Mary -were to recover, then books and science would be once more possible, -worth while. - -In the morning Mary opened her eyes and smiled into her mother’s, the -ones in range with hers when she wakened. She touched her bandages and -drew her brows trying to recall their meaning. - -“Oh, now I know!” she said. “I remember. But I think I am better; I -feel quite a different girl. Do you think I might have a nice little -egg, madrina?” - -“Oh, Mary, Molly darling! oh, my sweet, sweet girl! You may have all -the eggs in the world, and all the chickens!” cried Mrs. Garden, -falling on her knees in a frenzy of grateful joy. - -Mary closed her eyes again with a tiny smile. “Too many--at once,” she -murmured. Anne would not let any one but herself prepare the tray with -Mary’s breakfast that morning. Jane and Florimel almost quarrelled with -her for driving them off, but Anne was relentless. - -“She’s been my child all her seventeen, going on eighteen, years, and -I fed her and cared for her through every sickness she had. Now she’s -asked for food I shall get her first breakfast ready, and that’s the -end of it. You keep in mind how bad you wanted to do it, when you -couldn’t, and wait on her hand and foot when you can, later on, when -she’s getting about and tries to do for you two more than she should,” -Anne delivered her ultimatum as she bustled about, getting out the -little squat Wedgewood teapot, the cream jug and sugar bowl that Mary -had loved best as a child, and had called “Mr. and Mrs. Dumpie Short,” -affectionately. - -It did not need Doctor Hall’s beaming face to tell the Garden household -that Mary was better and was to stay with them. Nevertheless that look -on his face was a joy to see, after the anxiety that had been knitting -it. - -“The best of the Garden girls is going to live on, Jane and Florimel,” -he said. - -“With the worst of them!” cried Florimel, in a burst of happy tears. -“Jane and I don’t care how high you put Mary above us. We know all -about _her_!” - -“Oh, well, I’ve seen worse little girls than you two, though Mary is -about the sweetest maiden anywhere. That old word suits her, too. I’m -happier than you can believe to tell you she’s safe. And her pretty -face not touched, nor her fine hands scarred, beyond one mark that will -last, on the right one. Her arms may be scarred. I think she may have -to wear lace over them--when she goes to balls, I mean! But I had no -hope, at first, of coming so near saving her from disfigurement.” - -“Lace sleeves don’t matter; Mary won’t get to many sleeveless parties -in Vineclad,” said Florimel. “To think we’re talking about parties! For -Mary! Even if they had to be overall parties, it wouldn’t matter!” - -“Right-o, kiddo!” cried Win, with a choke. “Suppose--say, Doctor, -how’ll we be glad enough?” - -“No need of telling any of you the best way to be glad,” said Doctor -Hall, laying his hand on Win’s shoulder with a touch that expressed -volumes. - -Jane and Florimel, returning to Mary’s room, found their mother down -on the rug before the hearth with her scrapbooks and photograph -cases, rapidly emptying them. The fire was laid on the hearth, ready -for lighting, and Jane hastened over to her mother to ask what she was -doing. Mrs. Garden looked up at Jane, and then at Florimel, with an -expression on her face so new and different that both the girls were -struck by it. - -“I’m going to burn it all,” she said, indicating her trophies with a -comprehensive gesture. - -“Madrina! What for? Indeed you’re not!” exclaimed Jane. - -“This is what took me from you when you were babies; this is what kept -me from you all your lovely childhood, which can never be recalled; -this is what made me happy while you thought me dead. I hate it all, -suddenly! If Mary had died”--she dropped her voice, glancing toward the -bed, but speaking fiercely in spite of the muffled tone--“if Mary had -died, and I remembered how short a time I had known her, lovely, sweet, -dear Mary, for the sake of this!” Mrs. Garden wrung her hands, unable -to express her horror of what had been her pride. “There’s nothing in -it all, children; there’s nothing in anything on earth that draws one -away from right and beautiful motherhood. Never forget that. I’ve -been exactly what you called me: a toy-mother! I’m going to burn every -foolish one of them!” - -“No, madrina, please!” said Jane, dropping down beside her mother. “You -didn’t know when you went away from us; you were so young. You had no -idea that motherhood was more beautiful, made sweeter music, than your -singing. Don’t be sorry; it all had to be. Do you suppose it matters -how people learn things, provided they are not wicked? I imagine it’s -just like school: different courses, you know. I’m a lot like you, and -I can sing and act, you say. Perhaps I’d never have known that glory -isn’t the best thing in the world if you hadn’t left us, and come home -to tell us. Though I couldn’t have gone far from Mary! You mustn’t burn -these things, little madrina! We want them; they’re _our_ pride -now, you see! It’s like bringing in the sheaves; these are the sheaves -you’ve brought into the garden, and to your Garden girls. They’re ours -now, madrina, because you are ours.” - -Mrs. Garden stared at Jane, amazed, then dropped her head on her -shoulder with a long breath of relinquishment. - -“You are uncanny, Jane, positively,” she said, still speaking low, -not to disturb Mary. “You can’t possibly know the things you seem to -know, at your age! Every word you have said, Jane, is true and wise! -How could you see all that? Mary is my sweet dependence, but you can -be my teacher, thoughtful little Ruddy-locks! It’s your intuition, the -intuition of an artist, Janie, that shows you truth. After all, it is a -great thing to be an artist, isn’t it?” - -“Oh, yes!” Jane breathed fervently. “But of course I’ve got to be Jane -Garden, in the best way I can be, before I’ve a right to think of any -other label. I feel ages older since Mary was hurt.” - -“So do I, Jane, ages!” her mother agreed with her, as if they were -girls together. “I never had much experience with life; I’ve been -playing on its surface.” - -“You can’t have, can you, unless you’re awfully fond of some one--like -all of us now, here together?” asked Jane, suddenly embarrassed. - -“More wisdom!” her mother exclaimed. “One lives in experience and -feeling, not in events.” She had spoken louder than she meant to, and -Mary opened her eyes, and put out her hand. “Janie and Mel, I’m going -to stay right here, and I can’t help being glad not to have even -heaven without my chumsters,” she said. - -Florimel choked. When she was quite small, Mary had contracted the -two words, “chums” and “sisters” into “chumsters,” to express the -peculiar closeness of the tie between the Garden girls. Florimel had -always loved it. It was so sweet to hear it now, and to know that their -intimate love was not to be cruelly sundered, that she ran out of the -room to be tearfully glad, alone, on the stairs. Jane jumped up, and -ran over to Mary. - -“I couldn’t have heaven without you, Molly darling,” she said, putting -her glowing head down beside Mary’s brown one on the pillow. “It -wouldn’t be that, you know, if I saw you poking about the old garden -beds down here without me. When are you coming out into the garden -again, old Niceness?” - -“Soon, I think,” said Mary. “I don’t intend to be long getting back my -strength.” - -Mary was as good as her word. Now that her painful wounds had begun -to heal, her sound young flesh went on rapidly with its task of -restoration. In two days less than two weeks Mary was dressed in a -beautiful new gown, all white and blue and soft-falling drapery, which -her mother had sent for, that she might come forth in it as an outer -symbol of her recovery. - -Mr. and Mrs. Moulton, with Mark, were there in the garden to receive -Mary, each with a little welcoming gift for the girl who was the heart -of the Garden place, house, garden, and household. Mark’s gift was -fringed gentians for which he had scoured the hills beyond Vineclad, -rising before the sun to gather the rare and beautiful blossoms. Mark -murmured as he handed them to Mary, “They were as blue as her eyes, and -very like her.” - -The rain that had associated itself with Mary’s recovery in the minds -of those who loved her had been followed by successive downfalls. -The drought once broken, the earth received refreshment constantly. -The garden was beautiful with the more gorgeous bloom of September. -Salvia blazed above dark-red cannas; the hedge of hollyhocks at the -end of the longest garden vista shone like the mint; cosmos delicately -triumphed in its last act of the summer pageant. Through it all came -the persistent fragrance of alyssum and mignonette, faithful to the -end, not to be dismayed that, after their long summer sweetness, tall -and showy flowers overtopped them. - -“How lovely it all is after the rain! And after the fire!” said Mary, -with a little laugh that caught in her throat. “I’m so glad to come -back to you, dear old garden!” - -“It is just as glad to get you back, daughter,” said Mr. Moulton, -springing to forestall Win and Mark, and to help Mary into the lounging -chair prepared for her. “The garden called us all together to tell you -so, though it seems to me to need no spokesman.” - -“It never needed one, though it adds to it! But how it speaks! I think -it is fairly shouting, in reds and yellows and whites and purples: ‘The -old Garden garden is glad to see you, Mary. It can’t quite spare one -of its girls!’” said Mary, settling down with a sigh of utter content -into her great chair and into the great love all things, animate and -inanimate, around her bore her. - - - - -CHAPTER SIXTEEN - -“IMPLORES THE PASSING TRIBUTE OF A SIGH” - - -“When Mary began recapturing her kingdom she seemed to take it by -assault. You can see her jumping back to health since she got out into -the garden again, Lynette,” said Win, watching the three Garden girls -from the dining-room window. - -“She’s perfectly sound in health, so are Jane and Florimel; Jane is the -least strong of the three. I’m so happy to see Mary’s colour coming -back, to know she is safe, that I wonder at myself, Win!” said Mrs. -Garden. - -Win thought that she looked preoccupied. - -“Seems small wonder to me, Lynette,” he said. “I’d expect any one to be -happy about that, let alone Mary’s mother.” - -“Oh, of course, if one reasons it out! But I’ve been so utterly outside -domestic affairs always! I must go to write a note, Win, if you don’t -mind. Lord Kelmscourt is sailing next week; he wants to come here -before he goes.” Mrs. Garden gathered up her mail from the table and -went toward the door. - -“Glad to see him, for my part,” said Win sincerely. “Is he to stay -here, in this house?” - -“They were nice to me at Kelmscourt when I visited there.” Mrs. -Garden’s reply conveyed an excuse. “Lord Wilfrid won’t stay on long; -hardly a second night. Anne thought we should be able to manage it -quite easily; so did the girls, though I think they looked dismayed.” - -Win heard her soft laugh as she went out of the door. The Garden girls -were dismayed; they were discussing the expected guest that moment in -the garden; Win had noticed from the window that they looked solemn. - -“He is coming to ask her to be Lady Kelmscourt,” said Jane decidedly. -“He would not come for anything else. In novels they ‘run down to the -country’ before they sail for India, or Africa, or some land where -they are going to get a chance to earn glory in the army, or else -to kill some animals who are attending to their own jungle affairs, -not meddling with any one in such distant lands. Then they ask the -heroine to marry them, so they’ll have courage to interfere with those -none-of-their-business jungle folk, and she always does! I know!” - -Mary laughed, though she looked troubled. “You say ‘they’ do all this, -and the heroine marries ‘them.’ How many of them does the heroine -marry, Janie?” she asked. - -“One at a time, and one is quite enough,” insisted Jane, undaunted. - -“If madrina marries Lord Kelmscourt, I don’t see how I can bear it,” -Florimel declared. “If, when we thought she was dead, we had heard she -was alive and was Lady Kelmscourt, we should have been just as glad and -just as excited as we could have been. Of course it would be pretty -good fun to say, carelessly, to the other girls: ‘My mother, Lady -Kelmscourt, did’ something or other. But it’s not the same when you’ve -had her and loved her. There’s no use in my trying to think I’ll enjoy -visiting Lady Kelmscourt’s English castle; I may, but what’s that? And -I think just as Jane does that madrina will be a--countess, is it? What -kind of a lord is Lord Kelmscourt? Madrina knows we can’t have garden -parties in the winter, can’t even sit in the garden; she knows there -won’t be anything, then, but the house. We like it, but Lord Kelmscourt -has a palace, or a castle, or tower, or something. The moment she spoke -of Lord Wilfrid’s coming, I said to myself: ‘Farewell, cute little -madrina!’” - -Mary sang significantly: “‘I have so loved thee, but could not, could -not hold thee!’ I don’t see why you should bid her good-bye without -waiting to find out whether she is going or not, Mel. She is altogether -changed about Hollyhock House--and the Garden girls, for that matter! -Perhaps she’ll stay with them. I’m anxious, but when one is anxious, -there’s still hope; one isn’t sure of the worst. I’m sure, whatever -happens, we shall not lose her, so we’ve got to be reconciled to -keeping her as she likes best to be kept. We can’t be without her, -really, though we may have to do without her--do you see that? It -sounds like a riddle.” - -Mrs. Garden came down the steps, humming under her breath, looking so -girlish and happy that her children’s faces grew proportionately long. - -“I was just writing Lord Wilfrid when he called me on the telephone,” -she said. “He is coming, to-night. Do you think his room is as it -should be, Mary? Anne says it is, and I hesitate about going to see; -she might resent it.” - -“Oh, madrina, if Anne says a room is right, there’s no need of any -one else giving it a thought!” laughed Mary. “I’ll look at it, and put -flowers in it by and by. I don’t know how rooms should be prepared -for lords, even though they were once chauffeurs! In novels their -rooms, all English rooms, seem to lay no stress on any furniture but a -bath--valets bring in baths until one’s back aches. As that room has -its bath and dressing-room, I shouldn’t know what other furniture to -put into it.” - -“If the room is right for Mr. Moulton, for instance, it will be all -Lord Kelmscourt could desire,” said Mrs. Garden, smiling at Mary. -“Jane, I should like you to drive, when he is to be met; will you, -dear? I am going to the station; we’ll all go, but would you mind -driving the car?” - -“You’re afraid to drive with me, madrina,” Jane reminded her honestly. - -“Not so short a distance through these quiet streets. You look so much -nicer than Bell on the front seat; your straight young back and shining -hair is a pleasanter outlook for a guest than Bell’s outlines. Bell is -not a particularly safe driver yet. You don’t mind, Jane?” Mrs. Garden -pleaded. - -“Not if you are anxious to have Lord Kelmscourt look at the back you -like best.” Jane assented so unwillingly that her mother glanced at -her, with a laugh in her eyes to see how sullenly Jane’s eyes glowed -under her long lashes, and how the corners of her short upper lip -pulled down. - -The long, graceful lines of the Garden car could not surmount the gloom -on the faces of all its passengers, save one, on the way to the station -to meet Lord Kelmscourt. It was a car of a make that always suggests -pleasure, its lines are so sweeping, so elegant. But to-day it looked -as though it bore three youthful chief mourners. Jane still sullenly -unhappy, Florimel gloomy and angry, Mary so intent upon making the best -of it that her form of melancholy was the most depressing of all. - -Mrs. Garden seemed to see nothing of all this; she chattered and -laughed, and was animatedly blithe, gowned in her most becoming way, -her hat and its plumes so shading her face that she looked more than -ever her daughters’ eldest sister. - -In spite of their disposition to regard Lord Wilfrid as their natural -enemy, the Garden girls could not help admitting to themselves that he -had an attractive face and air as he came briskly down the platform, -carrying his own bag, and smiling a welcome to his waiting escort, -though they were not minded to welcome him. - -Mrs. Garden received him with pretty cordiality and Mary nobly -supplemented her. Jane was not able to maintain her forbidding manner -in the light of this guest’s frank pleasure at seeing her again and -finding her driving the big car, in which art he had given her the -first lesson. Florimel thawed a little, also, in this warmer air, -compelled additionally by the laws of hospitality. So they drove -homeward under an invisible, but, to Mrs. Garden, a perceptible, flag -of truce. - -“Mrs. Garden wrote me of your splendid courage, Miss Garden, and of its -cruel result. My word, but you’re a plucky girl! I’m no end glad you’ve -come through so well. I was greatly distressed while they were all -fearful you mightn’t get off with suffering for a time, I assure you,” -Lord Kelmscourt said. - -“Thank you, Lord Kelmscourt,” Mary replied. “It was not pluck that -made me try to help that baby; it was seeing her afire. No one could -have kept away from her. I am deeply thankful that I was not seriously -harmed.” - -“So he knew when I was so ill; madrina wrote him of her trouble,” Mary -thought, as she answered him, and, glancing toward Jane, she saw that -Jane was making mental note of this fact also. - -There was a fire on the hearth that night, not needed, but delightful -to sit before after the excellent little dinner, which Anne provided, -had been enjoyed. Win had not been under constraint in welcoming Lord -Kelmscourt; there were no reservations in his mind when he told him, -truthfully, how glad he was to see him again. - -“There’s the telephone! Excuse me, madrina, please,” said Mary, rising -to get the message. “Oh, Mrs. Moulton!” they heard her in the hall, -saying into the receiver, as innocently as if this call had not been -prearranged between herself and her guardian’s wife. “Why, yes, I -think we can go for a while. Lord Kelmscourt is here. All of us? Jane, -Florimel, Win? I’ll tell them, Mrs. Moulton. We’ll be there right away -if mother doesn’t mind. Good-bye.” Machiavellian Mary hung up the -receiver and returned to the group by the library fireside, innocent -and sweet. - -“Madrina, Mrs. Moulton asks if we may all go over to her for a short -time. Will you mind? Will Lord Kelmscourt mind if ‘the children’ run -away to play for an hour or so?” Mary asked, with a great effort to -keep her manner unconscious at the last words, but feeling a look of -guilt creep into her eyes. - -“Go if you like, Mary. Please don’t be long. I want Lord Kelmscourt to -know you better, to be able to tell his sister, who is a dear friend of -mine, what each of my girls is like; he has known Jane and Florimel, -when he brought them here in the car, but you he has seen but little,” -Mrs. Garden answered her. - -Lord Kelmscourt had laughed when Mary made her request. Now he arose, -and crossed the room to hold the door open for the three young girls as -they passed through it. - -“I fancy that I know Miss Mary better than she imagines that I do,” -he said, his pleasant blue eyes so full of mischievous kindness that -Mary’s dropped before their gaze. “I think that she would be a generous -foe,” he added, and Mary knew that her ruse, which her mother had -accepted without criticism, was transparent to her guest. - -“I’m not going, Mary,” Jane announced, after the three, with Win, were -safely outside the door. “As if I didn’t know you asked Mrs. Moulton to -call us up, and tell us to come over, so he’d have a chance to talk -to madrina! It’s all right; we’ve got to get out of the way, and let -him steal her, but I’m going right up to my room. I don’t want to go -anywhere to talk and behave.” - -“Nor I,” Florimel echoed. “Jane and I will go upstairs; they’ll never -know. When you come back, come in at the side door and whistle up the -back stairs, Win. We’ll hear and come down, as if we’d been with you, -but I couldn’t see a soul while I knew my little toy-mother was getting -stolen, just as Jane says. My gracious! People lock up their spoons!” -Florimel added with bitter disgust. - -“Do you mean to imply that this Englishman is spoony?” Win suggested, -but Florimel could not smile. She stalked upstairs, shaking her head, -its black braid of hair appropriate to the mourning stamped on the -handsome little face below it. - -Mary and Win went on their way, therefore, without the others. - -“I’m glad your hands aren’t scarred, Mary,” Win said, taking one -of them to draw it through his arm. “I’ve always been fond of your -capable, shapely hands, my dear. That mark on the right one isn’t going -to show. There’s romance in the air, Molly darling! Do you know I -think that Audrey can see me with her opera glasses screwed down to -a shorter range than she could before the Garden of Dreams came off? -Sometimes I’m tempted to imagine that Audrey begins to think of me as a -possible rival to Wellesley! Do you?” - -Mary laughed and squeezed Win’s arm with the beautiful hand which he -was glad to know was unmarred. “To tell the truth, Win dearest, I -haven’t noticed these symptoms of better sight in Audrey. But none of -us were one bit anxious about her being blind. I’d like to know why she -wouldn’t care for you, you splendid old Winchester-brother-uncle! I’ve -no doubt you’re right,” she declared. - -“I’m not going to try to get in the way of her college,” said Win, -thanking Mary with a pressure on the hand in his elbow. “But I’d like -to be visible to her, and to know I stood some chance when she came -home again.” - -“Mercy!” said Mary involuntarily. “All that time! Audrey won’t -graduate; she’ll cut off half the course. Perhaps I oughtn’t to say so, -girls ought to stand by one another, but you’re not conceited, Win, so -I’m going to tell you that all of the girls feel sure Audrey likes you -a great deal, and only seems to like her college plan better, because -she’s so sure of you. There; it’s out! Of course Audrey honestly longs -to study; I don’t mean she doesn’t,” added Mary hastily. - -The call on Mr. and Mrs. Moulton was a failure. Mary’s whole mind was -turned backward to the hearthside at home, where she knew that the -Englishman was doing his best to urge her little mother to leave her -fireside, and come to preside over his dignified and important house. - -“How long ought we stay, do you think, Win?” Mary asked after a -half-hour, and Mr. Moulton lay back in his chair to laugh at her. - -“‘The Considerate Daughter, or The Tables Turned,’ a farce in one act, -by Miss Mary Garden, with the author in the title rôle!” he chuckled, -turning to his wife to share his amusement. - -“Really, Mary, there is no reason why you should feel called upon to -smooth the way to an event which you dread,” observed Mrs. Moulton. - -“It isn’t that, so much,” said candid Mary. “I want to feel sure that I -didn’t act as horrid as I feel about it; that’s one thing. And another -is, if, by great good luck, madrina should decide to stay with us I’d -want to feel we got her honestly; that we hadn’t tried to keep her by -tricks.” - -“That’s the way to feel,” Mr. Moulton approved her. “If you can’t win a -game without peeping at the cards, or slyly moving your ball with your -toe, then by all means lose the game. It’s worse than lost if it’s won -by tricks, hey, Mary?” - -“I suppose that’s what we feel, sir,” smiled Mary, rising to go. - -Mark accompanied her and Win homeward, as a matter of course. “Well, -I’m sure I hope with all my heart your mother will not leave you for -this lordly chauffeur of yours,” Mark said as they sauntered along. -“She seems very young and merry to settle down here in Vineclad. To be -sure you are a great deal younger, yet it would seem natural for you to -settle down here, all three of you. But you belong to Vineclad, whereas -your mother seems like a bit broken off of another world.” - -“That’s just it, Mark!” Win said. “That’s Lynette.” - -“Yes, but gradually, and especially since I was burned, she seems to be -getting cemented on to our world,” Mary said wistfully. - -“The Englishman is lucky to have so much to offer her, if he cares for -her,” said Mark. Win looked over at him across Mary, surprised at the -discouraged note in the young voice. - -“Why, Mark, what’s up?” he cried. - -“Nothing. Nothing down, either; as down as that sounded,” returned -Mark. “But I see things as they are, young as I am. Mr. Moulton is -fine, as good to me as a man can be, and I’m getting on with the -work in a way that satisfies him--and he is exacting for his beloved -science!--and fairly to satisfy myself. But how shall I ever get on in -the world? I’m slightly lame; I’m doing underground work, though I do -love it. If I--if I cared about a girl, ever, what would be the use? -I’m not ungrateful; I surely love my work, but a young chap does like -to see daylight, or at least a crack where it could come in.” - -“There surely is romance in the air, as I told Mary to-night,” thought -Win, looking sidewise at the fair, quiet face beside him, which gave no -sign whether she had a suspicion of what this might mean or not. “Boys -are not worrying much about the future unless they have seen The Girl,” -thought Win. “And Mark would be blind not to see that Mary was indeed -The Girl of girls!” - -“I wouldn’t get impatient, Mark,” he said gently. “There’s a lot of -time for a boy under twenty. Since things have worked so well for you -thus far, I’d be content to believe they were going to work out right -in the end.” - -“I’ll try,” said Mark. “I get sort of raging; then I’m ashamed of it.” -And Win noticed that Mary, usually so quick to try to comfort every -one’s anxieties, did not raise her eyes nor speak. - -Mark left his friends at the gate, and Mary and Win went around to the -side door, and whistled up the back stairs, fulfilling their contract. -Jane and Florimel came down to join them, looking more ruffled in -spirit than when they had gone up. Jane was white to the lips, and -her short upper lip would quiver and draw; her eyes had hollows under -them and they had retreated into her head in a way they had, as if to -conceal their colour, as well as expression, when they were sorrowful. -Florimel, on the contrary, was dark crimson in cheeks and brilliant -eyed; she looked like an embodied young electrical storm. - -“I won’t kiss him and call him father, not if he is the king!” Florimel -declared, stopping short at the door, and nearly upsetting Mary’s -gravity, though she quivered with apprehension of what they were to be -told on its further side. The three girls saw, on entering, the same -impassive, perfect-mannered gentleman beside the hearth that they had -left there. - -Mrs. Garden’s eyes were gentle, her smile newly sweet and kind, as Lord -Wilfrid arose. Then her three beautiful young daughters entered. She -put out her arms to them with a new, motherly gesture which she had -learned by the light of the fire that had nearly cost her Mary’s life. - -“A pleasant evening, my dearests?” she asked. That was all, but her -voice gave Jane a swift glow of hope that sent her to her mother’s -clasp. - -They settled themselves beside the fire, which Win replenished. - -Obedient to Mrs. Garden’s expressed wish, Lord Kelmscourt talked -chiefly to Mary, drawing her out, that he might tell his sister how -lovely was this eldest child of her friend, whose talents had once -delighted that other world which Lynette Devon had forsaken. After -a quiet and pleasant hour, in which Mary found pleasure, and Jane -and Florimel plucked up heart, they could not have said why, Lord -Kelmscourt begged to be allowed to say good-night. - -“I am to spend to-morrow here; Mrs. Garden has kindly urged it, and I -am promised to be allowed to drive the car many miles, to see as much -as I can of this part of your great state. Then I go home to England, -carrying ineffaceable memories of the only American family I know -in its home, and of these three girls whom, I am proud to remember, -England may claim a share in, as she gave them their mother,” he said. -The little speech had a formality about it that did not prevent its -ringing sincere. It also conveyed to the three girls, distinctly, the -impression of a valedictory. - -When Win had gone with Lord Kelmscourt to his room, Mary, Jane, and -Florimel turned with mute insistence to their mother. They did not -speak, except through their imploring eyes. Mrs. Garden went to them, -holding out her hands, with her pretty grace, half crying, half -laughing. - -“You were horribly frightened, weren’t you, my treasures?” she cried. -“Once I could not have believed that I should have refused the shelter, -the honour of that good man’s love, nor the rank and luxury he would -give me. But I have found out what it means to be a mother, my little -lassies! I could not be less your mother, could not leave you again, -to mount the throne! Let me stay close to you always, my darlings, for -every day I shall love you better and grow a better woman in my home. -Oh, children, when I thought I might lose Mary, then I saw, I saw! I -couldn’t be Lady Kelmscourt, dearests, because I want to be nothing and -nobody on all the earth but just the Garden girls’ little madrina!” - - - - -CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - -“RICH WITH THE SPOILS OF NATURE” - - -“It certainly is convenient to be grown up,” said Florimel, when -the entire family had returned from bidding Lord Kelmscourt a final -good-bye at the station. He was gone forever, and, inconsistently, the -three girls were truly sorry. He had been so kind, so self-effacing, -his trustworthiness was so evident in driving the car, and in -looking after its occupants, that if there had been any way of -holding him, while at the same time holding him _off_--from -step-fatherhood--the Garden girls would have been delighted to have -added him permanently to their lives. - -“It’s quite as convenient to be a little short of grown up, often, -Mellie. What are you thinking of that makes you say that?” asked Mary, -rapidly divesting herself of her gown, and getting into a soft blue -lounging gown, as a preparation for throwing herself across the foot of -the bed for an hour’s rest before supper. - -Florimel unbraided her black hair and dropped it over the back of her -chair, rocking furiously to fan it. - -“We’ve been driving and driving, hours, and you and Jane and I were -miserable, miserable-minded, because we were so sorry to think Lord -Kelmscourt had to go away and be a rejected suitor. Rejected suitors -are perfectly tragic in stories! We could hardly answer when he talked -to us, and we all acted as if we were babies, standing on one foot with -our thumbs in our mouths, we were so awkward and embarrassed. And here -was the rejected suitor driving away, as calm as milk, and madrina -chatting with him, easy and natural! She was not a bit embarrassed; -neither was the R. S.! Of course Englishmen are supposed to be just -like Gibraltar, never showing what they feel. But I still think it’s -great to be grown up. It carries you through things. I’d love to be -able to refuse to marry some one, and then act the next day as if he’d -dropped in for tea, and I happened to be out of it! Not so upset; I’ve -seen people much more embarrassed when they had company, and something -to eat was spoiled, than madrina was to-day! It’s being grown up, and -out in society.” - -Jane stood in the doorway laughing; she, too, had on her kimono, and -she was wandering and combing her hair, after her incorrigible habit of -dressing on the march. - -“You’ll have to see that you change as you grow up, Mel, or you’ll -never hide your feelings,” she advised. “Well, I’m as sorry as I -can be that nice Lord Kelmscourt couldn’t stay--some other way! If -only he could have been our chauffeur, a chauffeuring friend, or a -friendly chauffeur, living near enough to spend lots of evenings with -us, like Mr. and Mrs. Moulton! He’s splendid. And the clever little -points he taught me in driving to-day! You can see he’s one of those -well-trained, all-around people who do everything well. I’m sure he’s -very fond of madrina; he was so willing to give her up.” - -“Of all reasons for thinking he liked her a lot!” cried Florimel. - -Jane nodded her head hard. “You couldn’t tell how unwilling he -_felt_, but the quietly willing way he acted, I mean,” she -persisted. “A cheap little liking might make a row, but a big, deep -liking would consider madrina, and not make her uncomfortable.” - -Mary raised her head, and poked her pillow into a bunch, as she -regarded Jane with her customary admiration. - -“I wonder if you won’t be a novelist instead of a singer or actress, -Janie,” she said. “You do see things!” - -“Maybe I’ll be a telescope,” said Jane, turning on her heel and -swinging down the hall, singing foolishly: - - “_Jane could see when she’d look, so she wrote a great book, - Jane could see when she’d look, so she wrote a great book._” - -The three girls were ready for supper before their mother, and they -went out into the garden to wait for her. Whenever the Garden girls had -to wait, or had a few spare moments, or had work to do that could be -done there, it was as natural for them to stroll out into the garden -paths as it would have been for a bird to fly out of an open window. - -Mrs. Garden was not long following them. She came running downstairs, -all in white, and stole up behind Mary, who had not seen her coming. -“Why so grave, my little grandmother?” she asked. - -“Was I?” Mary turned to her with a smile that was far from grave. “I -was wondering whether those hybrid tea roses we planted this spring, -which are blooming so well over there, would really prove hardy and -survive the winter.” - -“Did I ever tell you that the Kelmscourt place, Lord Kelmscourt’s -splendid old house, time of George I, has an acre of nothing but roses? -Oh, me, it’s wonderful! You really know nothing of gardens over here.” -Mrs. Garden dropped her head and sighed wistfully, not an unmistakable -sigh, but a delicately done one, conveying a regret that was repressed, -struggling to the day. - -Instantly Florimel pounced on her, while Mary and Jane exchanged a look -of terror. - -“Now you’re sorry!” cried Florimel, her voice tragic. “We don’t blame -you, but now you’re sorry!” She stalked away, misery in her whole -attitude. Mrs. Garden threw up her head with a laugh, her eyes dancing -with mischief, swung on the toes of her dainty little slippers like a -dancer, and ran after Florimel. - -“You little gypsy explosive baby!” she cried, catching her youngest -girl around the shoulders and turning her to see her mother’s laughing -face. “I thought that would tease you, silly little zanies! Why, girls, -can’t you see how happy I am? I’m as pleased as if I’d found a lost -treasure chest! I was not obliged to leave you, of course, and I didn’t -come anywhere near going, but I feel as though I had escaped a great -danger! My lassies, I want you to know, once for all, that I’d rather -be your mother than anything else on earth. I’ve said that before, but -do realize how true it is! And I love the old Garden house and the old -Garden garden, and I’d be horribly jealous for you of any interest that -would divide me. I want to be yours, entirely yours! I’ve found it’s -the best thing in all the world to be a mother--even a toy-mother! -Come, hug me!” Mrs. Garden held out her arms, laughing, but with the -merry eyes that called to Mary and Jane, as well as to Florimel, -shining through moisture on their lashes. - -“Well, Lynette Garden! You bet we’ll hug you!” cried Florimel, and no -one felt that the slangy response was blameworthy this time. There -seemed to be need of vigorous expression. - -The Garden girls crushed the little white-clad figure in a threefold, -bearlike embrace. The day was won, their mother was won; the last -uncertainty as to her loving them well enough to be happy with them, -at the price of the loss of her old world of pleasures and admiration, -was settled. The strange relationship, in which the daughters -were almost as much their mother’s mother as she was their mother; -the protecting, petting, playful love they gave her, the admiring, -dependent, comrade love which she gave them, was cemented, assured -forever. It was an exceedingly happy, radiant Garden family that came -in to supper when Anne called the four young women. - -After supper, in the twilight of the garden, as usual, the mother and -the girls, with Win--and Chum, as always, at Florimel’s feet--sat -expecting Mr. and Mrs. Moulton. They heard Mark’s halting step coming -down the street, unaccompanied. Mark’s lameness was less visible than -audible. It swayed his body but slightly, but it gave an irregular beat -to his footfall. - -“Mark is coming without them!” said Mary. - -Mark came in at the side gate and across the path to the group. -“Thought I’d find you here,” he said. “Aren’t you chilly?” - -“Not yet, but we shall be soon,” said Mrs. Garden. “It was -uncomfortably warm in the sunshine to-day, but there’s a chilliness -creeping into the evening.” - -“September,” suggested Mark. “Summer’s over; though it takes the sun -awhile to find it out, the stars know it. I’ve a good deal to tell you. -May I bring a chair?” - -“With my help, Markums,” said Win, rising to take one arm of the garden -chair which Mark went over to fetch. - -“Oh, why not go in at once? We shall only have to move after Mark gets -under way with his story,” said Florimel, who hated to be interrupted -when she was interested. - -“No; let’s cling to every possible moment of our last garden evenings -this year!” cried Jane, and Mark dropped into the chair which Win -considerately halted near Mary. - -“I don’t know how to tell you,” said Mark, as they all looked at him, -waiting for him to begin. “I had a birthday to-day.” - -“And never told us!” Jane reproached him. - -“I don’t see how we happened not to have found out your date. We always -keep the birthdays; we love to. Why didn’t you let us know, Mark?” Mary -exclaimed. - -“Because you’d have bought me one of those girl-chosen neckties no -fellow ever wants to wear, Mary,” Mark teased her. - -“Are you nineteen to-day, Mark?” asked Mrs. Garden. - -“That’s all, Mrs. Garden, but don’t you think I’m pretty far along for -my age?” asked Mark. “Mr. and Mrs. Moulton had found out my birthday -date some time ago. Dear Garden blossoms, they’ve given me a present.” -The boy stopped short; evidently he was profoundly moved. - -“Oh, Mark, what?” cried Mary, leaning forward, catching his excitement. - -“A present with a condition attached to it, but such a condition!” Mark -resumed. “They have asked me to promise to devote my life to carrying -on Mr. Moulton’s work; with him, while he lives, for him after he is -dead. Mr. Moulton thinks that I shall be competent to do this, and he -has asked me to undertake it. It’s a great thing--both ways. A great -thing to do and a great opportunity for me.” Again Mark paused. - -“It’s big, old Mark!” said Win. “But the present in return?” - -“If I will accept Mr. Moulton’s trust in me and devote my life to his -work, he--they, his wife and he--will adopt me legally, not taking -their name, you know, but as their heir. They’ll make me their son. -It’s--it’s awful!” Mark choked, and his head went down on the back -of his chair, to which he turned his face, utterly unable to command -himself any longer. - -“Mark, dear, it’s not awful; it’s beautiful! Beautiful both ways!” -cried Jane. - -“I don’t know whether I’m more glad for you or for the dear Moultons,” -said Mary. - -“You don’t have to be glad separately; it’s all one,” said Florimel -wisely. - -“Old chap, I’m too glad to say how glad!” cried Win, slapping Mark on -the back with such vigour that it had a tonic effect. - -Mrs. Garden had not spoken, but the touch of her hand on Mark’s -shoulder was eloquent of her rejoicing sympathy. - -Mark faced them all again, wiping his eyes, unashamed. “I didn’t cry -when I was down and out,” he said. “A fellow doesn’t feel so much like -crying when he’s got his teeth set, and he’s standing things. But -this--this heavenly kindness gets me.” - -“It would any one,” said Mary. “But it isn’t all kindness, Mark. Mr. -Moulton was anxious, troubled when he could not see any one who would -be likely to finish what he had begun; you know what that means to a -scientist, for you are one yourself, in your younger way. And Mrs. -Moulton has been lonely. I can see that she leans on you as much, in -her way, as her husband does for the botanical work. They’re very fond -of you and this is just as good for them as for you--not that I want -to belittle what they do for you, but it wouldn’t be right for you to -think of it as in the least a charity.” - -“I don’t, Mary; I see it just as you do,” said Mark. “But you can’t -understand, not even you people who are so quick to understand things, -what it means to belong. My father and I were chums. When he died it -wasn’t so much that I was left poor, when I had supposed we were well -off, but the relatives I had rather did me, and I didn’t belong to a -soul. Take a dog; it isn’t enough to feed him. A good dog craves a -master, he’s got to belong to some one. I knew a lost dog once that -some people fed; he wasn’t hungry, but he was heart-broken till he was -adopted by some one who loved him. In a week you wouldn’t have known -him; chirked right up, _belonged_ again, you see. Now if a dog -feels that, so does a boy. You’ve all been like old friends to me, the -Moultons couldn’t have been better, but I didn’t belong to any one. -Mr. and Mrs. Moulton told me about this only a little while ago, at -supper time, but I know it’s making me over already. Oh, my soul, what -a birthday present!” - -“You’re going to accept the conditions?” hinted Mrs. Garden, with her -little look of mischief. - -“Accept them! I don’t believe I am; I think they simply swallow me up. -I would rather do something of the sort Mr. Moulton is doing than be -Romulus and Remus and found Rome! Think of it! I used to intend to go -to college, and then devote my life to science, but father was killed -in the fire and the whole game was up, college and affording to work at -a science--botany--and all! And then I wandered into Vineclad, looking -for a bookkeeper’s job which I heard was here, and walked right into -the fulfilment of my ambition! Talk about our lives being laid out for -us! Did you ever know anything like it? And Mr. and Mrs. Moulton’s -adopted son! The finest people! And everything on earth I could desire -made possible, just when no one could have seen a chance for me!” -Mark’s eyes as they rested on Mary were so alight that hers fell. - -“Lucky isn’t the only one lucky,” said Florimel, rising with Lucky -in her arms; the cat always found her after a while and cuddled -down in her lap wherever she was seated. Florimel held him close to -Mark’s face. “Kiss him and tell him you and he are twin brothers in -luckiness! But don’t you forget, Mark Walpole, that Florimel Garden -made you come home with her that day, you and Chum, both.” - -“Indeed I’ll not forget it, Miss Blackbird,” said Mark. “But I won’t -kiss Lucky; I’ll shake his paw instead. We are triplets in luck, Lucky, -Chum, and I! And it is the cold fact that the littlest Garden girl was -our mascot, all three of us.” - -“The littlest Garden girl can be some good, if she is only the gypsy -and the blackbird, dancing and whistling,” said Florimel with dignity. -“Here come Mr. and Mrs. Moulton. We’d better go in; Mrs. Moulton can’t -sit out so late, now.” - -“They let me come ahead of them to skim my own cream,” said Mark. -“Bless their splendid old hearts! I hope I’ll never fail them.” - -“Sons that fail usually walk into failure. You won’t fail them, Mark,” -said Mrs. Garden, rising and helplessly trying to draw her scarf around -her, to which end her three girls, Win, and Mark jumped to help her. - -The Gardens and Mark met Mr. and Mrs. Moulton at the steps. Mr. Moulton -smiled at Mary with the peculiar tenderness his eyes held for her, -mingled with a quizzical look that was new. - -“How do you like my son Mark? This is his first birthday; it was Mark -Walpole’s nineteenth birthday, Marygold,” he said. - -“Dear Mr. Moulton, we never, never shall be able to say how glad we -all are; as glad as we can be for you, too,” said Mary, seizing her -guardian by both hands. - -“Ah, then I can see that you like my son Mark, for I’m sure you would -not rejoice if I had a son whom you disapproved,” returned Mr. Moulton, -swinging both of Mary’s arms by the extended hands, and ending by -laying her hands on his shoulders while he kissed her cheek. - -“I’ve liked Mark from the first time I saw him,” said Mrs. Moulton, -temperately, but with a look at Mark that made her words sound warmer -than their registered temperature. “When he came over from your house -to talk to Mr. Moulton, he turned back to straighten a rug, and he -helped me to catch my canary, which had flown out of his cage; he -handled the little creature gently and wooed him with soft notes. -There’s a boy, I said to myself, who is orderly; witness the rug. -Gentle, patient; witness the bird. Kind and respectful; witness his -bothering about the concerns of a woman of my age. I decided on the -spot that Mark was a good boy; of course it was easy to see that he -was well-bred. I’ve never altered my opinion.” - -Mark looked at her, rosy red even to the tips of his ears. He went up -to her with an entirely new freedom and affection of manner. - -“See here, Mother Moulton,” he said. “You mustn’t praise me to total -strangers!” - -It was not hard to see that Mrs. Moulton was delighted by this little -speech. Not less than Mark she felt--the childless woman in a happy -home, and with a husband such as few women can boast--that it was a -great deal “to belong,” to belong in a motherly way, to a fine boy. - -“I’ve told Mark that I will not ask him to take my name,” said Mr. -Moulton. “He is to be my son, inheriting my property and my work, -fulfilling what I cannot finish. But he loved his father, and I should -not wish to supplant him, even if I could, which would be impossible -nonsense to discuss with a boy worth his salt. But as we all know that -when ‘The Study of the Flora of New York’ is published, long after I am -dead, it will be under my name and Mark’s, as joint authors--I believe -I’d be glad if he would consent to become Mark Moulton Walpole. Would -you object, Mark? Mary, urge my request.” - -“It needs no urging, sir,” said Mark. “I’d be glad to take your name. -There’s no way I can express fully how much I owe you, nor how I’m -yours. That goes a little toward doing it.” - -“As to owing, that’s nonsense. We serve one another, we three members -of the Moulton family. It’s not nonsense to feel that you belong to -us beyond verbal labelling. It may be nonsense, but it is true, that -I’d like my name to be incorporated with yours, so that when the book -appears, compiled by Austin Moulton and Mark Moulton Walpole, those -who see it will recognize you as my kin. As you surely are, my boy, -though you did not spring from my stock. We are of the same botanical -genus--and genius!--at least. Much obliged for your instant consent to -grafting my name on yours. Come home, Mark; Mrs. Moulton is waiting.” -Mr. Moulton laid his hand on Mark’s shoulder and the elder man and -the younger one looked into each other’s eyes with a smile that said -everything. - -The Garden girls, Mrs. Garden, and Win went with them to the gate. -Florimel chased Mark with the intention of boxing his ears twenty -times, the birthday chastisement, with “one to grow on.” She was -fleet-footed, but Mark out-dodged her. Florimel hung, breathless -and defeated, on the gate watching the Moulton party down the road. -Mrs. Garden, Mary, Jane, and Win waved their hands just as wildly as -Florimel did, till the three visitors were out of sight. Then Florimel -stepped off of the gate and voiced the sentiments of her family in her -own way. - -“Isn’t it hallelujahfied? Makes you want to sob your cheers, you’re so -stirred-up glad!” she said. - - - - -CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - -“AND FEEL THAT I AM HAPPIER THAN I KNOW” - - -The Garden girls had always kept Garden Day, at least since they had -been old enough to devise it. It was the ingathering feast of their -garden, the day when the dahlia, gladiola, and other summer bulbs were -taken up, and the annual additions to the tulips, daffodils, narcissi, -and crocuses were made. When the delicate plants which were worth -saving were potted to be housed, the autumn seeds sown for spring -growing, the pansies put to bed under leaves and straw, the roses laid -down and covered, the stalks of vines straw-wound, and plants needing -protection straw-thatched. No gardener was allowed to perform these -tasks alone. Mary, Jane, and Florimel had insisted, from the time that -the older two were small girls, and Florimel was not much more than a -baby, on bidding their garden this autumnal farewell. For, though they -would wander through its paths during the warm days which stray into -November, and, even in the winter, spend hours out of doors, this day -marked the formal closing of the garden. They observed this feast on -the 30th of October, when the weather allowed, or when it did not fall -on a Sunday; in case of storm, or when the day came on Sunday, the -garden day was kept on November 2d. - -“It should be either the eve of the eve of Allhallow, or on All Souls’ -Day,” Mary had decided when they were discussing the permanent date -of their observance. “We can’t have it on Halloween, because there is -likely to be something going on that we’d want to take part in. But -we ought to keep our garden day near to All Saints’, or else right on -All Souls’ Day. Those are harvest days, you see: the ingathering of -beautiful characters. I think we ought to keep our beautiful flowers’ -day at that time.” - -“You nice Mary!” Jane endorsed her. “And let’s call it Slumber Day, -because we tuck all our flowers up in their beds then.” - -Thus Slumber Day became a settled observance with the Gardens, and -around it many little customs gathered, pleasant little fanciful -things which, once done, seemed good to the girls and were noted for -repetition. - -“This year there are four girls instead of three, little madrina!” -said Mary. “You mustn’t work and get tired--we get so tired on this day -we can hardly eat our supper! But you must help on Slumber Day, or it -won’t seem right. We forgot to tell you about the uniform! Isn’t that -too bad! Of course something else will answer.” - -“Anne told me about it; mine is ready,” Mrs. Garden said, and she -looked delighted to be able to surprise her girls with this answer. -“Breakfast at seven on that day, Anne says. I wonder whether I can get -ready so early! I shall, whether I can or not!” Mrs. Garden hastily -forestalled Mary’s coming suggestion that the hour be made later for -her benefit. - -She was as good as her word. At ten minutes to seven she ran -downstairs, dressed in the Slumber Day uniform, a dark-blue, plain -gingham, short skirt, plain shirt waist, tan gingham collar and -cuffs--selected because it was so near loam colour--an enamel cloth -apron, long enough to kneel on, rubber gloves, and a cap of the -dark-blue gingham, made like a dusting cap, but each one ornamented -with a bright-green cotton wing, wired so that it stood straight -and defiant and gave a touch of festivity to the otherwise sternly -practical costume. - -“Doesn’t she look dear in that?” cried Florimel, rushing over to snatch -her mother off her feet in an enthusiastic salute. - -“I wonder why it is, but if any one really is pretty and stylish she -looks better in working clothes than she does dressed up! Mary and I -would rather have had a red wing in our cap, but they had to be alike, -and Jane isn’t quite as pretty in red as she is in other things.” - -Jane laughed. “Pussy-cat way of putting it, Mel, creeping on -tippy-toes! Fancy bright red on my hair!” she cried. - -“How nice, how pretty you all look--well, yes; I suppose I might say -_we_ all look, since I’m dressed like you, but I can’t see the -effect of the fourth uniform,” Mrs. Garden corrected herself, seeing -Florimel’s protest coming. “You look like a trio costumed for something -in light opera.” - -“The Digger Maidens,” suggested Win. “I’ve got to go to the office this -morning, as I told you, but I promise to help you all the afternoon. So -long, till then.” He went off whistling. Jane turned from the window -with a wave of her hand to Win, who chanced to look back. - -“I think Win is as nice as a boy can be. He’s so indifferent about -it, too; doesn’t seem to think he’s good looking and clever, and he -couldn’t be kinder, nor more truthful and straight. Sometimes he -strikes me all over again, as if I’d just met him! He’s a splendid boy, -honestly,” she said. - -“When I was here before, I mean when I first came here, your father -used to say that Win would grow up to be the kind of man that never -seems to do anything in particular, but which quietly fills a big place -in the community. Win was but a little lad then, yet his half-brother -was perfectly right about him. We all think that a great man is one -with great talents, or who achieves great deeds, but, after all, if -one who has a great heart, a great conscience, great truth, great -steadfastness, great loyalty, isn’t a great man, I wonder who is? And -Win has all these things,” said Mrs. Garden. - -“Why, madrina, how nice!” cried Mary, delighted. “I never had the least -idea that you cared so much about Win.” - -“Win didn’t care so much about me, Mary, when I came home,” said Mrs. -Garden, with a smile. “He had been devoted to me when I lived here, -but he could not forgive me for leaving you for my beloved work in the -world. I don’t blame him; he could not understand what slight excuse -there was for it. I see now that its principal justification was that -I was not prepared to bring you up; I had to learn. But now Win is -forgiving me, and, I hope, getting fonder of me again.” - -“Little madrina, you are growing up, my child! You are almost as old -as Jane, sometimes, and we all know how profoundly old Jane is, in her -thoughtful mining into things! Come along, little Garden girls, little -Lynette, Janie, Florimel! We must begin our Slumber Day ceremonies!” -cried Mary. - -Arming themselves with a trowel apiece, the Garden girls, to follow -Mary’s example and counting Mrs. Garden as one of them, went out of the -house. They marched to the great ox-heart cherry tree which gave its -shade to one corner of the grassy end of the garden where the seats -stood, and which gave its delicious fruit abundantly, late in June, to -the Gardens and to their neighbours. Here the girls paused. “We first -sing the lullaby Slumber Day, you know,” Florimel explained to her -mother. - -Under the tree, with trowels waving in a cradle motion, the girls sang -“Kücken’s Lullaby.” It was really pleasing in effect; Florimel sang -acceptably, Jane’s voice was extraordinary, and Mary’s alto was sweet -and deep. - -“We are sorry we have not started in with another lullaby, but we -sang this long ago, when we didn’t know any other,” said Florimel -apologetically in response to her mother’s praise. “That’s always our -opening hymn.” - -The forenoon passed in work that was solid, although varied by -fantastic ceremonies. As, for instance, “The Gladiola Gladness” was -a triumphant dance in which the gladiola bulbs were borne aloft in a -basket, in a whirling dance, celebrating their past blossoming. - -“Jane does this because we think she’s most like a gladiolus, thin and -reddish and brilliant,” Florimel explained. - -Mary had the ceremony of the pansy covering. She covered them with -leaves and made mysterious passes over their visible little forms. - - “_Pansies for thought, sleep as you ought, - Sleep, but awake for your true lover’s sake,_” - -Mary repeated as she did this; it was the incantation of her childhood. - -Florimel took up the dahlias. The girls had early recognized their own -types, and had distributed tasks accordingly. Florimel’s dark, vigorous -beauty was suited to dahlias as well as Mary’s quiet loveliness -harmonized with pansies. With the dahlia bulbs Florimel executed a -solo march, formal steps and courtly gestures its ritual. - -So the morning went on, filled with work, but work brightened to play, -and elevated close to poetry by all sorts of curious fancies. Mary, -Jane, and Florimel were serious, almost reverent in their fantastic -ceremonies. Though they were almost grown up, the association of -these things with childish faith made the day and its events to them -something between fantasy and reality. - -Mrs. Garden watched them, participating in what they did, as far as she -was able, with the keenest enjoyment and no less wonder. This curious -day brought her into touch with her children’s lost childhood. She -realized what clever little beings they had been, developing in their -own way, set apart by their father’s theories of education. The pang -with which she realized this, her pride in them and regret for the days -in which she had been separated from them, days never to be recovered, -showed her how far she had travelled from the old Lynette Devon, -whose joy had been the public; how far toward Lynette Garden, whose -increasing joy was in being her beautiful and gifted children’s mother. - -Joel Bell was an amazed witness of the Slumber Day ceremonies. What -they represented he could not imagine; why “great girls like these -should carry on so” he could still less imagine. He wheeled barrowloads -of straw and leaves, dug and tied and trenched, with unvarying gravity, -but his pitying disapproval peeped forth. - -Noon afforded the first moment when conversation was possible. One of -the unwritten laws of Slumber Day was that no talking was allowed; -participants in ceremonies are not supposed to converse while they are -going on. Joel availed himself of this interlude. - -“Say, Mis’ Garden,” he began, “about that nus’ry you was thinkin’ of -foundin’. Seem’s if it couldn’t hardly be, ’thout they was a widder, or -some such woman, ready to let the children be dumped with her. Who’d -look after ’em?” - -“We were saying just that, Bell,” said Mrs. Garden. “My daughters -thought we could find such a person, but so far none has been -suggested. Do you know one?” - -Joel Bell shook his head. “Fact, I don’t,” he said. “I spoke to one -woman, but she quick showed she thought I meant her to take Mis’ Bell’s -place, my wife’s, you know, or else she meant to take it. I didn’t -wait to find out which; either way my safety laid in flight, an’ I -flew.” - -In spite of themselves the girls burst out laughing at this. - -“Don’t you laugh, girls,” said Joel, with deeper seriousness. “There’s -been many a unfort’nate man married before this because he hadn’t -the ready money, nor yet the courage to go to law to prove he had no -notion of takin’ a woman who ran him down like a hunted deer. It’s a -dreadful thing when a woman that’s at all set picks out some man to -marry him! Matrimony is seriouser, anyway, than girls like you thinks, -an’ I believe it’s the dooty of older folks to try to make the younger -generation sense that.” - -Mrs. Garden could never accommodate herself to the American freedom -of speech on the part of those whom she employed. “Such awfully bad -manners!” she said in her most English accent, when her disapproval -was not more severe. Now she turned toward the house. “Anne must have -called us, my dears,” she said. “Very well, Bell; we will try to find a -matron for our Day Nursery.” - -At the house Anne met them. “I called, but you did not hear, Mrs. -Garden,” she said. “Lunch is nearly ready. Jane, Florimel, there is the -strangest person waiting to see you. She came some twenty minutes ago, -but would not let me disturb you. She would not give her name. She said -she wanted to see one of the Garden girls, ‘the one with red hair,’ -she said, or a younger one with black hair, but the red-haired one she -would rather see. She is fearfully frowsy; light hair, I truly think -it is bleached, but maybe not. She is in mourning, yet she has on a -good deal of queer jewellery and a white voile waist, all covered with -coarse machine embroidery. She is a queer person, Jane, altogether. -What can she want of you?” - -“I’ve no idea, Anne; can’t imagine who she is,” Jane began, but -Florimel said: - -“I can! It’s Miss Alyssa Aldine, and somebody’s died.” - -“Oh, Florimel!” Jane remonstrated. She did not like to remember that -she had sought Miss Aldine--Mrs. Peter Mivle--to ask advice as to her -career. Nevertheless, Jane hastened to the library, not waiting to -alter her costume, instantly sure that Florimel was right, and that it -was Miss Aldine whom she should find waiting for her. - -Florimel _was_ right. Miss Aldine, quite as blowsy in her mourning -as she had been in her pink wrapper, arose to meet Jane as she entered, -followed close by Florimel. - -“How are you, my dears?” she said. “I don’t suppose you remember me.” - -“Surely we do,” said Jane, putting out her hand with a sudden -cordiality. She saw that Mrs. Mivle looked a great deal older, and sad -and worn, and, Jane-like, was moved to welcome her. “Surely we remember -you, Mrs. Mivle. You were very nice to me when I was so silly as to -bother you.” - -“No trouble at all,” said Mrs. Mivle, tears springing to her eyes. “You -were an awfully pretty pair to drop into a body’s room so unexpected. -It does a body good to see girls like you. And now you don’t call me -Miss Aldine, but you give me my sainted Petey’s name. I suppose you saw -by the papers my loss?” - -“No, we haven’t seen,” said Jane, feeling her way. “I noticed you were -in mourning. It isn’t--you don’t mean----” - -“Yes, I do!” sobbed Mrs. Mivle. “My blessed Petey took sick, and -before we knew he was more’n kind of off his feed, you might say, he -was past all hope--appendicitis! Ain’t it awful? Sydney Fleming--you -remember, his stage name, that was?--was simply great in the lead, -could do anything. We acted together like we were made for it. And it’s -my belief we were. Things come out like that in this world, once in a -while; folks sent into it to be with certain other folks, for work and -pleasure. And say, we _were_ happy, honest! Petey and me got on -when we was in private life just like the leading lady and her support -does in the slickest plays. It’s broke me up something fierce to lose -him. See, I’m wearing his ring! I won’t part with it while I can hold -it, but I’m down on my luck. Comp’ny burst up, couldn’t get a leading -man fit to take Pete’s place, I was all in; couldn’t do justice to my -repertoire, we played to poor houses, manager was up against it; sorry -for me, sorry Pete died, but sorry for himself when he run behind. He -had to shut down, and it took pretty much every cent I had to get home; -we was playin’ the State of Washington when the end come. So I don’t -know how long I’ll be keeping poor blessed Petey’s ring.” - -The poor creature, kind and honest, though grotesque and slangy, pulled -off her shabby glove and displayed the huge diamond, of yellowish -cast, which Jane and Florimel remembered on her lost “Petey’s” hand. - -“Oh, I’m so sorry!” murmured Jane. “I’m truly sorry. Not that it does -you any good. What will you do?” - -“My dear, that’s exactly what I’ve come to ask you,” returned Mrs. -Mivle earnestly. “You come once to ask my advice. Says I to myself, -I believe I’ll go hunt up that little handsome red-haired girl, and -her little beauty black-haired sister, and ask them to find me a job. -I haven’t one friend outside the perfession. I’ve gotter go to work -at some ordinary job. My acting days are over. Not an act left in -me; haven’t the heart. Do you suppose I could act Lady of Lyons with -another playing Claude Melnotte in Petey’s place? Not on your life! -Do you think there’d be anything for me to do here in Vineclad? There -often is work, and few to do it, in one-night-stand kind of towns--I -beg your pardon! It’s a real nice place, but you’ve got to admit it’s -small _and_ slow! You can ask any one about me. There isn’t a -thing to be said of me I wouldn’t just as lieves as not was said. I’m -honest, if I do say it, and I’m good natured. Pete always said any one -had a cinch keeping his temper living with me. I’d do anything I could -do; no pride left in me. All my pride was perfesh’nal, and, as I say, -my acting days is over, with Petey’s life. Get me a job at anything, -there’s a dear child! I’ll do my best, though, to tell the truth, I -wouldn’t advise any one to get me to cook. Petey used to say: ‘Nettie,’ -he’d say, ‘the quality of mercy is not strained; neither is your soup.’ -Oh, my Petey! Always like that, jokin’, and witty, and great, simply -_great_!” Peter’s widow gulped painfully. There was no doubt that -her grief was profound. - -“You wouldn’t care to look after children all day, would you?” asked -Jane. “We have a charity we are starting here. It began in a sort of -play; we began it, my other sister and I, but it is going to be a real -charity, and go on far and long, we hope. We’ll tell you about it. But -you must have lunch with us. Please excuse me a moment, while I tell -my mother and sister you are here, and then we’ll have lunch. Why, I -forgot! Florimel, please take Mrs. Mivle up to my room and let her -cool her face and hands with fresh water. I know one doesn’t care to -eat after one has been talking fast and feeling sad. You mustn’t say -a word, Mrs. Mivle! As you told me about my visit to you: it isn’t -any trouble!” Jane ran away, and, as rapidly as she could, prepared -her mother and Mary for what they were to meet. Mary apprehended the -situation quicker, having already known of the former Miss Aldine. -But after Mrs. Garden understood, she was as ready as her girls were -to befriend this unfortunate one, who stood on the lowest rung of the -ladder of fame, on which, and in another and higher form of dramatic -art, Lynette Devon’s little feet had once balanced. - -Mrs. Mivle was completely overcome by the kindness which she received. -Before lunch was over Mrs. Mivle had been offered and had accepted -the post of matron of the Day Nursery. It was arranged that she was -to return to New York, where she had left her slender belongings, and -fetch them to Vineclad at once. She went away immediately after lunch -in the station carriage summoned for her, tearfully grateful, relieved, -and nearer happy than had seemed possible to her ever to be again. - -The Gardens and Anne watched her away, amazed at this sudden solution -of a difficulty. They were not a little pleased that the Day Nursery -was proving its right to exist, though it had been begun with -light-hearted indifference, by doing a great service for a lonely -woman, whose merit was so overlaid with misleading externals that it -was hard to see what could have become of her without its refuge. - -“And I know she’ll make the babies happier than almost any one else in -all the world could!” said Jane, as if she were answering some one, -though no one had made a comment. - -“She’s very good indeed, kind and honest,” said Anne Kennington, who -was keen to judge. “I’m sure she’ll make every child that comes near -her quite wild over her, when she begins singing songs to them and -amusing them; you can see she’s that sort! But, my heart, Mrs. Garden, -dear, what slang they’ll learn from her!” - -“Oh, no, Anne, perhaps not. We’ll try to get her to talk and dress less -picturesquely,” said Mrs. Garden, who had whole-heartedly espoused the -dethroned leading lady’s cause. - -The afternoon ceremonies of Slumber Day were resumed and carried to -their end. Win came home, as he had promised, to take part in the -finale. He brought Mark with him; they had to be told of the singular -guest and her prospective office, in spite of the rule against -interrupting the routine of Slumber Day by conversation. - -Joel Bell listened to the tale with, literally, open mouth. “Well, how -little you can tell what’s around the corner before you turn it!” he -said. “To think you’ve been the means of givin’ a sorrowful lady, an’ a -lady without a way to git her bread, both comfort an’ bread an’ jam, so -to speak!” - -“Everything is done; the Slumber Day ceremonies are over,” announced -Mary at last. “We have put the garden to sleep till another spring. Now -our closing rite, then for supper! Mark, you may take part in it. We -each in turn bid our garden sleep well till next year, and then we tell -it what has been the best gift we have had this year, and ask it to -make the gift grow and blossom next year. Florimel first; we begin at -the youngest.” - -“No, Chum and Lucky first!” laughed Florimel, and she held the cat’s, -and then the dog’s, head close to the ground, under the sun dial, where -this last event always took place. - -“Good-night, sweet garden, our best friend. My best gift has been my -home. Keep it and increase it another year for me,” she said in turn, -for each. Then when she released them, Lucky ran up the lilac bush, and -sat there, and Chum ran around and around the grass, tail out and mouth -stretched, laughing, taking it all as a frolic. - -Florimel, Jane, and Mary said the same thing: - -“Good-night, sweet garden, our best friend; rest well and waken -refreshed. My best gift has been my mother. Keep her for me, and -increase her health and happiness next year.” - -“Good-night, old garden, true friend,” said Win. “My best gift this -year”--he hesitated--“has been hope and greater happiness. Fructify -both for me next year.” - -Mark bent over the sod. - -“Good-night, new-old friend, noble garden,” he said. “My best gift this -year has been through the Gardens--home, affection, hope. Keep my gifts -for me, and let them grow great another year.” - -Mrs. Garden bowed low, her hand upon the sun dial. - -“Good-night, sweet garden, patient friend. My best gift was won -coming back to thee. My best gift this year, and for all years, is my -children. Guard their health, and help me keep them, the flower of your -soil, forever.” - -She straightened herself and looked around. Mary’s deep blue eyes, -Jane’s golden ones, Florimel’s glowing black ones smiled at her. - -“My Garden blossoms,” she cried. “My best gift, truly, is that I’ve -learned to be your mother!” - -Mary turned toward the house, a hand on her mother’s shoulder, the -other on Jane’s arm. Florimel, behind them, encircled her mother with -her hands on her sisters’ shoulders. - -“Now we are all going from our happy, put-to-bed garden into our happy, -waking house! Come, boys, both!” Mary said. - -“We’re so blessed that we can’t quite know how happy we are. Isn’t that -beautiful? To know we’re happier than we can know we are?” said Jane. - -“I wonder if we aren’t the very luckiest girls in the world?” said -Florimel. “I wonder if we could call our garden fairies, and ask them -who were the happiest girls in the world, what they’d say?” - -And from the steps, where she stood in the setting sun, came Anne’s -voice calling, like an answer: - -“Garden girls! Garden girls!” - - -THE END - - - - - [Illustration] - - THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS - GARDEN CITY, N. Y. - - - - -Transcriber’s Note: - -Punctuation has been standardised. Other changes have been made as -follows: - - Page 38 - of the simple chambreys in which _changed to_ - of the simple chambrays in which - - Page 43 - green and white chambrey _changed to_ - green and white chambray - - Page 64 - tell their wards it is somethng _changed to_ - tell their wards it is something - - Page 141 - in all it’s vineclad life _changed to_ - in all its Vineclad life - - Page 170 - through the vineclad streets _changed to_ - through the Vineclad streets - - Page 172 - its size unobstrusive _changed to_ - its size unobtrusive - - Page 205 - in the Roman colosseum _changed to_ - in the Roman Colosseum - - Page 259 - squat wedgewood teapot _changed to_ - squat Wedgewood teapot - - Page 316 - You musn’t say a word _changed to_ - You mustn’t say a word - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOLLYHOCK HOUSE *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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