“Mrs. Danforth would like to see you all in the library, ma’am,” said Cummings, who opened the door. The twins wondered very much why their mother’s hands trembled so. It could not be because she was afraid of that straight-backed maid-servant who took their wraps and who smiled at them quite pleasantly. Elsa was nowhere to be seen, which surprised them.
In the centre of the library stood Mrs. Danforth, not quite so erect as usual, and with one hand on a chair, to support herself. She bowed her head and her figure swayed slightly when Mrs. Holt entered the room, with Ben just ahead of her on the right and Alice on the left.
“Mother,—here are my children, Alice and Ben,” Mrs. Holt said in a low voice which sounded as if there were tears behind it, “and, children dear,”—she pressed them gently forward,—“this is your own grandmother.”
Mrs. Danforth knelt down suddenly and put her arms around both of the mystified children, looking first into one and then the other of the amazed, blue-eyed faces. She tried to speak, but something choked her.
“Let me tell them, mother,” said Mrs. Holt, helping her to rise and leading her to a chair. “I have always promised them I would tell them, some day, about their grandmother.” Kneeling down, herself, now, by the side of the chair, and drawing the children into her embrace, Mrs. Holt said in the same tear-sounding voice and very slowly: “Listen, children: when I was hardly more than a grown-up girl, I ran away from my home and married your father against my mother’s wishes, for he was a poor man, and he, too, was hardly old enough to be married. And because I was a disobedient daughter, my mother punished me by not wanting to see me for a long, long time. That time is ended now and—” Mrs. Holt hid her face and her tears against her own little daughter’s shoulder.
Then Mrs. Danforth found her voice and said: “Dear children, your grandmother has been a sorry, sad woman all these years that she tried to punish her daughter, but she is happy—very happy now—to have her daughter back again and her own grandchildren.”
“Are you our grandmother?” Alice asked shyly, staring with wide-open blue eyes at the gray-haired lady who said such interesting things and seemed so sorry.
“Yes, darling,” was the grandmotherly answer. “And you look just as your mother looked when she was a little girl.”
“You are really and truly my grandmother?” asked Ben in a delighted tone, although he could not stop thinking how surprising it was that his mother had ever been a little girl, and had been punished.
“Yes. Are you going to love me?” Mrs. Danforth was astonished at herself for asking.