Then she laid the table with her finest tablecloth and her grandmother’s china, and with every rose in the garden in a bowl in the center. She really was pleased with the result.
II
As it happened, they came by a late train, so that Miss Carter was sitting on the veranda, looking very calm and leisurely, as they approached. She did not feel so, however. When, around the corner of the hedge, she saw Maude’s familiar gray hat, which came down almost to the tip of her niece’s pretty little nose, and beside it a most unfamiliar straw hat on a tall head that bent deferentially, she was anything but calm—and, for a moment, anything but hospitable. How could she be glad to see this man who might take Maude away from her?
“He’d never appreciate her!” said Miss Carter. “Not in a month of Sundays!”
Perhaps this might seem a little unjust, when Miss Carter hadn’t even seen the man yet; but what she meant was that neither this man nor any one else in the world could know the Maude she knew. He had never seen and never would see the remarkable infant Maude, the neatest baby that ever was, who used to lie out in a basket under that elm tree, her long white dress pulled down perfectly straight, her little dark head exactly in the center of the tiny pillow, her clenched fists lying one on each side of her round, serious face.
How Maude’s mother used to laugh at that neat baby of hers! And how she used to laugh at the slightly older Maude who went, every day for weeks, in a pink sunbonnet and a pink dress, to try to open the garden gate, and each time sat down unexpectedly upon the path!
When there was no mother to laugh any more, Miss Carter had taken on the job. At first she had thought that without her sister she never could laugh again; but it proved easier than she had expected. She found that when the person you love wants anything, you can do impossible things. When figured out on paper, she had seen that it was impossible to send Maude to college; but she had sent her. And now, when she realized how impossible it would be to let Maude go, she knew in her heart that she could and would do that gladly.
“If he’s anything like good enough for her,” she stipulated.
She felt pretty sure, though, that Maude would never look at a man who was not[Pg 286] admirable. She had seen that this Mr. Rhodes was tall, and she expected him to be marvelously handsome, with knightly manners and a commanding intellect. Maude was so very particular, and so intelligent herself—a private secretary at the age of twenty-three!
The garden gate opened, and there they were. Miss Carter rose with a welcoming smile, but—