“And all the birds I know of,” Mrs. Conway said, “build the nest before the young ones come. Did you ever see wrens wait till the young ones could help with the building?”
Dr. Wise came in at this point, and Dolly slipped away, all the pleasurable elation at having “made something up” entirely gone. How could any one make up poetry if they had to be as careful of facts as this? It had seemed to her that as long as everything had “sounded right” nothing else mattered. Her cheeks burned as she ran away. She felt she had been silly again, and so ashamed was she that it was years before she ever attempted again to “drop into poetry.”
Five years after Mrs. Wise’s death the little boys had a mother again, and into the quiet life of Dolly, Phyl, and Weenie there stepped five riotous and ready-made brothers.
The lives of the two families had run too close together not to merge in the end.
When at the end of three years of the wretchedly-paying school Mrs. Conway was forced to pack up and go back to try another bout with the Fates in Sydney, Dr. Wise, lonely himself, and in despair at the thought of his lads growing up in miserable Sunnymeade without her gentle influence, came also to the city and started a suburban practice close by the little home she had made.
[193]
]The death of an aunt about this time brought Mrs. Conway a little legacy, seventy pounds a year perhaps. The house she rented had a spare room; she took two boarders, a student and a clerk, and once again was just able to make a living. But life was fuller and pleasanter in every way here than in Sunnymeade, so small privations pressed less heavily.
It was after two years of this life that Dr. Wise finally persuaded the mother of the little maids to let who would take the house she had, and come into his that so sorely needed her.
And so there was another revolution in those small girls’ lives, and once again fresh days and dreams presented themselves.
[194]
]CHAPTER XVIII
TEN AT TABLE
The half-past five train whistled shrilly at the station, and Phyl dropped hastily down from the low branch of the quince-tree where the afternoon sun had found and left her [buried in Comin’ thro’ the Rye]. She ran hastily up the orchard; already small black specks were on the brow of the hill, and those same specks would enlarge and enlarge until in ten minutes they trooped up the garden-path and demanded dinner.