Marta, who, in the breeding of her generation, felt sentiment as more or less of a lure from logic, dropped beside the bed in a sudden burst of sentiment and gathered the plump hand in hers and kissed it.
"Mother, you are wonderful!" she said. "Mother, you are great!"
"Tush, Marta!" said Mrs, Galland. "You shouldn't say that. Your grandfather was great—a very great man. He never quite got his deserts; no good man does in politics."
"You are better than great," said Marta. "You soothe; you help; you have—what shall I call it?—the wisdom of mothers! Minna has it, too." She ran a tattoo of kisses along the velvety skin of Mrs. Galland's arm.
Mrs. Galland was blushing, and out of the depths of her eyes bubbled a little fountain of stars.
"Marta, you have kissed me often before," she said, "but you have been a little patronizing from your hilltop of youth and knowledge. Sometimes you have looked to me lonely up there on your hilltop and I know that I have been lonely sometimes in my valley of the years where knees are not good at climbing hills."
"It was not my intention," Marta said rather miserably.
"No, it is a businesslike age," answered Mrs. Galland.
"I—you mean I was too detached? I was not human?"
"You are now. You make me very happy," her mother replied. "But you must sleep," she insisted.