“You may wonder why I should have done this, knowing the character of Anglesea as I did. I have sometimes wondered at the same act. But I think it was from affection for Glennon I acted. I knew how he longed to have Anglesea with him at Myrtle Grove. I wished to gratify that longing. I knew that nothing I could do could either cement or sever the bonds of that strong friendship. I knew also that Anglesea never had and never would show his cloven foot to Glennon, or that even if he should do so, Glennon would never tolerate it; he would fly from it. I felt instinctively that Anglesea could never harm my brother.
“More than willingly, gladly, my father agreed to my plan. He wanted to gratify his son. So I wrote immediately to see if I could obtain lodgings, ‘for change of air,’ at the dairy farm. In good time came a favorable answer.
“Then my father wrote to Glennon, authorizing him to invite his friend to spend the Easter holidays with him at Myrtle Grove.
“I did not wait for the arrival of the visitor, but on the Wednesday before Easter I set out alone for Kent, meaning to engage some country girl in the neighborhood of the dairy to wait on me while in lodgings.
“I reached the dairy about four o’clock on that Wednesday afternoon, and found my son, now a fine boy over three years old, in the rosiest health and most boisterous spirits. He sprang into his ‘auntie’s’ arms and covered her with caresses before he began to search her pockets and her hand bag for the sweetmeats and toys she was accustomed to bring him.
“A dainty tea table was waiting for me in a charming cottage parlor. So Mary Chester coaxed my ‘nephew’ from his ‘auntie’s’ arms and showed me into a clean, neat, fresh bedroom, snow white, as all delectable bedrooms were in the days before the ‘decoration’ craze spread over the land. There I laid off my bonnet and washed off the railroad dust.
“And then I returned to the parlor, where my ‘nephew’ was allowed to join me at the tea table, sitting up in a high armchair.
“That night Mary Chester waited on me as lady’s maid, but the next day I procured the country girl I had been thinking of.
“I spent a really happy week at the dairy with my child and his foster-brother. These two children were so fond of each other that it was a comfort and delight to me to think of them together.
“Mary Chester had no other children, and she was entirely devoted to them. John Chester, her husband, was a fine, wholesome, honest young man, bearing an excellent character in the neighborhood. We all went to the parish house together on Easter Sunday, leaving the two baby boys at home in charge of Mary Chester’s grandmother, who was too infirm to sit through the long church service, but who was quite equal to the care of two children for a few hours.