"But don't you get awfully tired?" she demanded.
"Well, yes, Miss Moss, I do. But so does almost every mother of a little family. You come to take it for granted, you know. A mother rather sinks her life in that of her children, and—after all, she doesn't lose half so much as she gains. And getting tired—why, I know just from what Mattie has told me about the way you do at the library that you understand the satisfaction of doing for others, and that getting tired's a part of it."
Reaching the parsonage, Elsie didn't go in, but sat on a bench in the garden for an hour, not thinking, hardly musing, but in a sort of spell as it were. As she rose at the stroke of six, she was saying to herself: "I never knew life was like that!" And she repeated it as she entered the house.
On the hall-table was a letter from the Elsie in New York. Taking it to her room, she perused it eagerly. One paragraph she read over twice, and yet twice again at bedtime.
"Oh, Elsie-Honey," the passage ran, "I was so relieved and thankful to get your letter and feel convinced that you like Uncle John and Aunt Milly just as well as I do Cousin Julia—though I don't see how you can—quite. It came to me the night before I got your letter—suppose you should want to swap back? The cold shivers chased one another up and down my spine and nearly splintered it. Of course, I should have done it without a word, but oh, Elsie-Honey, I don't mind telling you now that it would have broken my heart for sure. For I'm simply mad about Cousin Julia—so dotty over her that I believe if she'd told me I couldn't on any account study for the stage, I should have kissed her hand like a meek lamb. Instead of which she knows and approves—that is, she is willing. Only an angel from heaven would really approve—and I suppose he (or she) wouldn't. At any rate, my present job is trying to keep from bursting with happiness."
CHAPTER XV
"Elsie, I rather want to hear that Elsie-Marley-Honey-thing again," remarked Miss Pritchard. "Would you mind doing it now?"
The two sat alone on the veranda of the hotel at an hour when other guests were resting after the midday meal. Before them, beyond a stretch of mosslike lawn and a broad sandy beach, rolled the sea, brilliantly blue, with the waves curling dazzlingly white. Miss Pritchard, comfortably dressed in a plain pongee-silk suit with a long jacket, was ensconced on a willow settee with some recent English reviews. Elsie, perched on the railing, her back against a pillar, gazed at the far-away sky-line. She wore a pale-pink linen frock. Her small face with its dark eyes and big dimples, her bobbed hair, and her exceeding slenderness of form gave her such an appearance of youthfulness that she seemed a very tall child, rather than the small girl she was.
"I like your manner of speaking of my specialty, Cousin Julia," she remarked. "Pray tell me why you want to hear it again, if you have such scant respect for it?"