Lynn argued the point hotly, with Muffie to back her.
“She couldn’t be,” they said.
“Yes, she could—in a book,” said Pauline. “I’m not talking about really truly, of course. But in a book they can be as lovely as lovely.”
“So is mother,” said the little girls stoutly.
“Oh, of course,” said Pauline, and her heart softening to the distant dear one, she said, “Well, ‘once ’pon a time there was a mother as beautiful as our mother, and she died’.”
“Oh, oh,” said Lynn. “Oh, I wish mamma was here. Oh, I don’t like your story a bit, Paul.”
“Silly,” said Paul, “this is only a book mother—it doesn’t hurt book mothers to [p163] die. Now just stop interrupting me. Well, she died—she’s just got to die or the rest of the story can’t happen. The beautiful mother died, ‘and one day when Emmeline was sitting in the spachius drawing-room of the castle—’”
“Who’s Emmeline?” asked Muffie.
“Oh, how stupid you are,” cried Pauline; “she’s the daughter, of course,—‘sitting in the spachius drawing-room of the castle her father strode in, and he led by the hand a very horty lady. “This is your new mother and I command you to obey her, my lady Emmeline,” he said. Emmeline fainted to the ground.
“‘Her father the noble lord was always out at his office and didn’t know how the horty step-mother treated Emmeline, but she grew thinner and paler every day, and all her face went transparant and the blue veins were trased in their pallor and her little hand was like a skellington’s; and the cruel step-mother made her do all the scrubbing and hard work, and treated her like a menient. And one day the Lady Emmeline disappeared and was never found again. But twenty years afterwards the wainscotching in the castle was being mended, and they found her lying behind it, her long eyelashes resting on the marble pallor of her cheeks, her little hands clasped in their last long sleep, quite dead. [p164] And the noble lord wept bitterly and resolved never to have another step-mother, and he built a monyment with a white angel to her memory’.”