Annabel stared at her. Then she smiled. She shook her head.
“It isn’t the same thing,” she declared. “You little know—how much it isn’t the same thing!”
And, after all, the parade was not so terrible. They assembled quietly, and with importance, at the city hall and marched through the principal streets, and had speeches; and Eleanor and Annabel marched side by side.
And Annabel was so busy guarding her mother from unpleasant experiences, and looking after her comfort, and providing places for her to sit down when the procession stopped a minute, that she quite forgot to have experiences of her own or to be thrilled or frightened at her temerity, or any of the exciting things that her imagination had cast beforehand.
“I call it a rather tame performance!” she declared at dinner that night, after it was over, “—a rather tame performance!”
And Richard, who had stood on the sidewalk and watched his wife and daughter march past, with a little amused smile, nodded assent.
“You made a mistake taking your mother, perhaps?” he suggested mildly.
Annabel cast a quick glance at her mother’s unperturbed face, and her look lightened.
“Mother’s a sport!” she declared. “I didn’t take her! She took herself!” She was silent a minute.... Then—slowly: “I’m not so sure I shouldn’t have backed out the last minute, you know—if mother hadn’t been so set on going!” She looked at her meditatively. “You can’t tell what mother will do!” she declared. “She does the queerest things—queer for her, I mean!”