Anne forced a smile and slipped the gingham over her head.
"If you'll stitch the skirt seams, mamma, I'll baste this collar. That's the only tricky part in the whole thing. Perhaps we can finish it to-day."
"We certainly can. We'll stay right with it till it's done."
And they did, stopping only for a cup of tea and some very stale cake, about one o'clock. At three the dress was finished.
"Now, you go lie down and take a nap and when you wake phone Roger to come up for dinner. He hasn't been round for ages, not since Christmas." Having become involved in the exact date, Hilda slipped over it quickly.
"We will some other time, moms, but I can't to-night."
The long day of sewing and chatting, and constant steering away from the subject of Roger, had exhausted Anne and she wanted her own quiet home, which, even if its peace were now disturbed, held its past security, and a calm, quiet cleanliness that her mother's never had. "I've got all the things in for a fussy kind of supper and they'd spoil."
"Then of course you can't." Death itself could not have been a greater deterrent. "What-all are you going to have?"
"Oh, a fussy pudding, and mayonnaise and things."
Anne was putting on her things in the bedroom and Hilda stood watching, a little envious of Anne's calmness. Mayonnaise and fussy pudding! Perhaps, if she had dared, years ago——