Mrs. Gordon laughed. "Have I noticed it, James! Lucy and I have been doing our best to bring it about for the past two months. She actually enjoys going around with other girls now, and the effort has been a good thing for Lucy, too. You know, Marian has the making of a very fine and accomplished girl under her drawback of ill-health. Don't you think she has grown to be a very pleasant little guest?"
"Not only that, but she looks so much stronger, and she has some color in her cheeks. I hated to see her as thin and white as she looked in the summer. I didn't wonder Henry was afraid to leave her. She's gained at least ten pounds, I'm certain—though she hasn't had many luxuries here."
"I don't know," said Mrs. Gordon thoughtfully. "It's luxury to have a home and friends her own age, after having lived principally in hotels and on shipboard for so long. I don't think she has known what home is since her mother died. When she gets back her health—you remember what a bright, jolly little thing she was years ago, James?—I know Marian will want to open up that big Long Island house and live there. She is the only one left to make a home for her father, and with a little more self-confidence she is quite smart enough to do it."
"Aren't you rushing things a little?" inquired Major Gordon genially. "Henry would be a bit surprised at the idea."
"I hope he will be more surprised when he sees her," said Mrs. Gordon, smiling. "Don't stay too long at Headquarters," she added, as her husband moved toward the door. "It's Saturday, you know."
The Major jerked his head in the direction of the parade, where squads of recruits were tirelessly drilling in the cold wind. "It's also war time," he remarked, stopping to tickle Happy's ears as he came racing up the steps.
Lucy and Marian had gone up-stairs and plunged into their Latin, so as to finish with it as soon as possible. It was not a popular study with either of them, and translation, of which Miss Ellis seemed especially fond, was Lucy's bugbear.
"How far have you gone, Marian?" she asked after twenty minutes' silence. "'The queen will fight?' I don't believe she will, anyway—why should she? Aren't these the silliest sentences?"
"She has to fight because we know so few verbs," said Marian, laying down her pen to stretch, "unless you want to make her dance or sing."