"Here we are! Look, Kitty! that is home; and we must bid each other welcome, since there is no one to do it for us both except Mehitable, and I don't believe she will think of it."
"Well, I must say, Dora, you've got things to going a great deal better than I should expect," said Kitty graciously, as she looked about her. "Why, that sweetbrier beside the door, and the white rose the other side, are just like ours at home; and the woodbine growing up the corner too!"
"They came from the old home, every one of them," said Dora, smiling happily. "I wrote in the spring, and asked Mr. Burroughs to be so kind as to ask whoever lives in the house to take up a little root of each of the roses, and send them to me by express. You know he said, when we left, that we should have any thing we liked from the place, then or afterwards. So he wrote such a pleasant note, and said he had sold the house to a cousin of his, a Mr. Legrange, who had made a present of it to his wife; but I could have the slips all the same: and next day, to be sure, they came, all nicely packed in matting, and some other plants with them. Karl brought them out and set them in April; and they are growing beautifully, you see. Wasn't Mr. Burroughs good?"
Kitty did not answer. She was bending low over the sweetbrier, and inhaling the fragrance of its leaves. Karl and Sunshine had driven to the barn, and the girls remained alone. Dora glanced sharply at her cousin once, and then was turning away, when Kitty detained her, and said in a low voice,—
"My mother planted that sweetbrier, and used to call it her
Marnie-bush, after me."
"I know it," said Dora softly.
"And that was the reason you brought it here. And I have been cross to you so much! But I did love her so, Dora! oh, you don't know how much I loved my mother! That is the reason I never will let any one call me Marnie now. It was the name she always called me, though Kitty belongs to me too; but she said it so softly! And to think you should bring the Marnie-bush all the way from Massachusetts!"
"I thought you would like it, dear," said Dora absently; while her eyes grew dim and vague, and around her mouth settled the white, hard line, that, in her reticent nature, showed an emotion no less intense because it was suppressed.
Then her arm stole round Kitty's waist, and she whispered in her ear,—
"We two motherless girls ought to feel for each other, and love each other better than those who never knew what it is; shouldn't we, Kitty?"