“Little girl,” she said kindly, “you cannot know how my heart has yearned through the years, first for a daughter of my own and then for a granddaughter to whom I might teach the things that would help her to become a truly womanly woman. It would mean so much to me, Geraldine; it would give me so much happiness, if you would let me just pretend that you are that little girl.”
The wondering lassie sat up, her beautiful violet eyes brimming with unshed tears. There were also tears in the eyes of the old lady, and, perhaps, for the first time in her sixteen years the girl felt a rush of sympathy in her heart for someone not herself.
“You, too, are lonely, Mrs. Gray?” she asked. Then she added sorrowfully: “I guess I never really knew what I had missed until I heard the boys and girls here telling about their wonderful mothers. Father has often told me that my mother was wonderful, too. She would have taught me to sew and make my own dresses and hats and to cook, if that is what a girl should know.”
The housekeeper marveled. This was not the Geraldine of yesterday. What had happened? Mrs. Gray could not know, but what she did know was that it was a moment to seize upon, and this she did.
“Geraldine,” she said, “let me teach you these things.”
“Oh, will you?” was the eager reply. “How long will it take me to learn, do you think? May I begin a dress today?”
Mrs. Gray laughed, and, stooping, she kissed the girl’s wet cheek, then she said: “Get on your coat, dearie, and we will go into town and buy the material.”
This was the beginning of happy days for these two.
A week later Geraldine stood in front of the long mirror in her sun-flooded room, gazing with shining eyes at her own graceful self, clothed, for the very first time, in a garment of her own making.
She had begged Mrs. Gray to permit her to put in every stitch so that she might truthfully say that she made it all herself. To whom she wished to say this, the little old lady could not surmise.