“Do come out, dear,” she said. “The air will do you good, and I want your advice with Celeste. No one has such taste as you.”
Mrs. Pennington held her beautiful daughter in her arms a long moment, and then broke into words and laughter as she hurried from the room.
“We have just an hour and a half before luncheon. Are the girls coming too, Chrissie?”
Chrissie shook her head.
“Winnie must practice, and it is Polly’s day to attend to the plants in the conservatory,” she said, very precisely. She exercised a certain control over her sisters.
She moved upstairs gracefully to her own room, and Mrs. Pennington followed more slowly.
Each step she took seemed to be weighed as with lead, and once she stopped and pressed both her hands on her heart before she could go on.
Polly, who had finished cleaning her silver, was on her way to the conservatory—already Winifred’s clear, neat scales were running up and down the piano with the perfection of an automaton—when she met her mother at the top of the stairs.
To pop down the watering can and fold her mother in her arms was the work of an instant.
“You duck!” she said, kissing the small, dear, worn face, “do you know how much I love you? Have you the least idea how sweet you are, you lamb and dove?”