“You have such beautiful hair, Mother. I wouldn’t wear a cap if I was you,” she said.
“Your father likes a bit of lace on my head, Kitty. He says it makes me look more motherly.”
She was laying the “bit of lace” on her brown hair as she spoke. Then she took from her open jewel case, two gold pins set with turquoise, and fastened the arrangement securely. Kitty watched her with loving smiles, and finally changed the whole fashion of the bit of lace, declaring that by so doing she had made her mother twenty years younger. And somehow in this little toilet ceremony, all Kitty’s sorrow passed away, and she said, “I wonder where my fears are gone to, Mother; for it does not now seem hard to hope that all is just as it was.”
“To be sure, Kitty, I never worry much about fears. Fears are mostly made of nothing; and in the long run they are often a blessing. Without fears, we couldn’t have hopes; now could we?”
“Oh, you dear, sweet, good Mother! I wish I was just like you!”
“Time enough, Kitty.” Then a look of love flashed from face to face, and struck straight from heart to heart; and there was a little silence that needed no words. Kitty lifted a ring and slipped it on her finger. It was a hoop of fine, dark blue sapphires, set in fretted gold, and clasped with a tiny padlock, shaped like a heart.
“What a lovely ring!” she cried. “Why do you not wear it, Mother?”
“Because it is a good bit too small now, Kitty.”
“Miss Vyner’s hands are always covered with rings, and she says every one of them has a romance.”
“I’ve heard, or read, something like that. There was a woman in the story-book, was there not, who kept a tally of her lovers on a string of rings they had given her? I don’t think it was anything to her credit. I shouldn’t wonder if that is a bit ill-natured. I ought not to say such a thing, so don’t mind it, Kitty.”