“But to leave you here alone! How could I ever do that? What are you thinking of?”
Katherine laughed at her daughter then. She was extraordinarily pretty when she laughed, startlingly pretty. But when she sobered, as she was bound to do too quickly, she was quite different, still lovely but not startling. Her face, sober, was intensely earnest. She had a rather square and strong chin but with wide, melting gray eyes to offset it. Her dark curly hair, which when undone came just to her shoulders, could be held in place at her neck with only a shell pin or two, it was so amenable in its curly crispness. Her cheeks and little slim hands were tanned, but with healthy colour showing through, making her, Kate often said, exactly the colour of a golden peach. She was slim and very graceful and not tall.
But in spite of all Katherine’s loveliness and feminine charm, the impression one gained from her was one of over-earnestness, a fire of intense purpose steadily, even fiercely burning under the outwardly gay and light manner.
Now she was laughing. “Why shouldn’t you leave me alone?” she asked. “And I won’t be so alone, either. The Harts are staying. The boys will be my protectors and my playfellows both. I’ve been a fortunate woman all these years to have two such boys as well as my girl! And three mornings a week, you know, I shall be busy helping Mr. Hart with his cataloguing.... Now we shall have to collect all our wits and think about suitable clothes for you.”
Kate’s heart began to beat. When she had read the letter she had not let herself even contemplate what going would mean, not for an instant; for she had not dreamed her mother would so fall in with Aunt Katherine’s plan. But since she had fallen in with it, since she wanted her to go—well, it was very exciting! For the first time she might have for a comrade a girl, a girl of her own age, a chum! For if Elsie, that stranger unheard of until a few minutes ago, was lonely, What was she, Kate Marshall? Oh, she would surely be gladder of Elsie than Elsie could possibly be of her!
She went to the border of the lily-of-the-valley bed and began weeding beside her mother.
“I don’t see what we’ll do about clothes,” she said a little tremulously, not yet really believing in this new vista that seemed opening before her, like the valley there, at her very feet. “If I do go, I suppose Aunt Katherine will expect me to dress for breakfast and dinner and supper and in between times in that splendid house of hers.”
“No, not quite so bad as that; but she certainly will want you to have—let’s see—two ordinary gingham dresses, a little dinner frock, a party frock, a white dress for church, a sport coat and hat, a garden hat, a street hat, a street suit, a——”
But Kate interrupted this list with a quick laugh. “She’ll want in vain, then. Let’s get down to business and just discuss the must-be’s, if I am to be a pig and go and leave you here alone for July with a vacation on your hands.”
Katherine straightened up, brushing the soil from her fingers. Her quick ear had caught a joyous lilt in the voice and laugh that to an ordinary ear would have sounded merely dry. Her own heart leapt in sympathy with Kate’s.