“Cheer up, dear hearts! It was purest accident. And Millicent’s pretty gowns have served their purposes long ago. I’ve no doubt they can be put together again well enough, and in any case you must not care! I forbid it. Come, let’s get back into our own century, and take a walk before the sun goes down. I have no end of pretty by-paths to show you.”
That evening, there was enough chill in the air for a small fire in the living-room fireplace, and Miss Lyndesay seated herself before it on a high-backed settle, with a girl on either side of her.
“If I didn’t remember that one of the things Hannah liked me for first was my habit of sitting quietly without work,” she said, “I should be 145 tempted to improve these minutes by finishing the carving design I am making to go over the fireplace.”
“What is it? Let us see it, and maybe we’ll let you. You have such a peaceful way of working you don’t make me nervous as some people do.”
“It is there on the desk.”
Hannah brought the brown paper, and she and Frieda bent over it together.
“L-a-e,” spelled Hannah, but Frieda looked up, delighted.
“I know. Laetus sorte mea! It means ‘Happy in my lot!’ It is in the book Tante Edith sent me for my birthday, about the little cripple.”
“O, yes, The Story of a Short Life. I’ve read that, too,” said Hannah, “but I didn’t recognize it just at first. I should think, if it is to be your motto, you’d have to change the gender and make it ’laeta,’ Aunt Clara.”
Miss Lyndesay laughed. “I’m glad you both know the story. I expected Hannah to, but hardly Frieda. Did you read it all by yourself, dear?”