So Grandmother was going to have a maid for Mother, too! Would wonders never cease! Ann looked on with interest, while the butler indicated one of the maids at hand as the one recently engaged for Mrs. Sterling. If Mrs. Sterling were as surprised as Ann, she did not show it, and after all, it is not so difficult to fall into ways to which you have once been accustomed.
Everything was done in a matter of fact way, quiet, rather formal, yet Ann was conscious of a new feeling and atmosphere, of approval in the glances directed toward her pretty mother, so sweet, so dear, as Ann thought. Then there came an interruption. Roy, unabashed, slid straight down the stairs upon the “sacred bannister,” as Ann said afterward.
“Hello, Gramma! Awful glad to see you back. It’s been a terribly long time,—and Ann, I howled and yelled when I found out that they had gone and started for Montana without me! Old Maurice, too!”
Ann wondered if Roy were in for a rebuke from Madam LeRoy, but none was forthcoming. She bent over the little boy to kiss him. “Glad to see ‘Gramma’ back, are you, dear? Well, that is good. Gramma is glad to see you, too. And I have a real wild West suit for you in my trunk.”
“Oh, goody! You’re a good sport, Gramma,” he added, to the horror of Munson. But Madam LeRoy only laughed. “As soon as the trunks are brought up, Roy, come to my room. I have to rest and get ready for dinner now.”
“All right. I’ll watch for the trunks.”
Rose, who had given Ann a welcoming smile, in remembrance of one trying day when she had served Ann to a lunch, eaten in worried loneliness, so far as the family was concerned, respectfully followed the travelers upstairs and showed Mrs. Sterling, with her new maid, the room that was to be hers. It was next to Ann’s, who was told that her mother’s maid would also serve her. “I’ll not be much bother to you, Adeline,” said Ann. “Take good care of Mother, for she is worn out.”
This was luxury. Her own room, her own bath, a maid when she needed one,—and Mother next door! “I wonder,” thought Ann, “if it is the room she used to have.” It was, as Ann found a little later.
Suzanne was away with Madeline for a week end visit in Boston, it seemed. Maurice had driven his mother to the village. Madge, thinner than ever, and much taller, waited for Ann, sitting outside her door, as Ann found when she started out after dressing. “Why, Madge, dear child! Why didn’t you knock?”
“I promised I wouldn’t. But I was going to be right here, just the same!”