"I wonder that you take the trouble," she said, referring to the proposed reception.
The blue orbs of Madam Carroll dwelt upon her for a moment. "We must fill our position," she answered. "We did not make it; it has been allotted to us. Its duties are therefore our duties."
"But are they real duties, mamma? May they not be fictitious ones? If we should drop them for a while—as an experiment?"
"If we should drop them," answered Madam Carroll—"if we should drop them, Far Edgerley, socially speaking, would disappear. It would become a miscellaneous hamlet upon a mountain-top, like any other. It would dissolve into its component parts, which are, as you know, but ciphers; we, of the Farms, hold them together, and give them whatever importance they possess."
"In other words, we, of the Farms, are the large figure. One, which, placed before these poor ciphers, immediately turns them into wealth," said Sara, laughing. "Precisely. The receptions are part of it. In addition, the Major likes them."
Sara's eyes left the soft darkness of the garden, and rested upon the speaker. "If my father likes them, that is enough. But I thought he did not; he used to speak of them, when we met at Baltimore, as so wearisome."
"Wearisome, perhaps; but still duties. And of late—that is, since you last saw him a year and a half ago—he has come to make of them a sort of pastime."
"That is so like my father! He always looks above everything narrow and petty. He can find even in poor little Far Edgerley something of interest. How glad I am to be at home again, mamma, where I can be with him all the time! I have never met any one in the world who could approach my father." She spoke warmly; her gray eyes were full of loving pride.
"He appreciates your affection. Never doubt it, in spite of what may seem to you an—an increase of reticence," said Madam Carroll.
"Father was never talkative."