And to her surprise Mrs. Breen answered the letter at once, with a long one all about her visit, and enclosing funny little cartoons of each one of the family, including the boy who had spoken his mind to Lucy. Strange to say, Lucy was able to acknowledge the truth of the young man’s remark.
“Some day,” said Lucy to herself, “if this turns out all right, I will tell him that he was perfectly right.”
Lucy was coming to think, with a sense of deep chagrin, that she herself had been the one in the wrong. And being an honest girl and wanting very humbly and deeply to live up to the pledge of the Girl Scouts, she was growing most anxious to make good her faults.
So she drove the painters and paperhangers and upholsterers almost wild, and had the happiness of seeing the beautiful room all settled and in order two days before Mrs. Breen was expected. It had a hard time staying settled however, because Lucy spent all her time after school trying things in new places to see if they looked any better. Her father vowed that he would go up and nail the things down, but he was just as proud and pleased as Lucy.
With all the planning and plotting, and various jaunts to the shops together, and to some movies and once to the theatre, Lucy and her father had entered a new epoch in their lives. They too seemed to have forgotten the past.
As Elise said, they found that they could make a beginning anywhere. And once begun, they found that it was like a door that had opened into a beautiful place full of happiness and sunshine—a door that closed softly behind them and shut out all the despair and gloom on the other side.
When the day came for Mrs. Breen’s return, Mr. Breen insisted on Lucy coming to meet her, and Lucy, in whom some of the old dread seemed struggling to awake, went silently. But when she was suddenly caught in a warm embrace, before even her father was greeted, and when a sweet voice said, “Oh, what a long two weeks it has been, Lucy! Do say you have missed me!” Lucy felt that all was indeed well with her world.
Mrs. Breen had brought another brother with her: a shy, awkward boy, evidently frightened to death of Lucy, a fact which of course set her completely at her ease. They drove home, and Lucy and her father dogged Mrs. Breen’s footsteps up the stairs when she said she would go and take off her things. Not for worlds would they have missed seeing her first look at the newly decorated room. And it was worth all the trouble to witness her delight and appreciation.
So Happiness and Love and Understanding came into the Breen home. Lucy wore her trefoil with a new gratitude and a new understanding. Elise felt a happiness that she had thought she could never feel, for she had helped a sister Scout through a dark and dreadful place in her life. Mrs. Breen was so happy that she sang and sang all the day long, and when one day a baby boy set up a lusty roar in the beautiful room that Lucy had made, it was Lucy who named him, and Lucy who assumed such airs of superiority in speaking of “my baby brother” that the girls grew to avoid the subject of children in general as it was sure to bring from Lucy some anecdote to prove the vast superiority and beauty of the Breen baby.
Rosanna was happy too. Uncle Robert had been away longer than Rosanna liked. She was surprised to find how much she missed Uncle Robert. And much as she loved him, and wanted him to be happy, she decided that it was really a good thing that he did not care for girls. The various uncles who did like girls she noticed had a way of marrying one of them and leaving home for good. That was a poor plan, thought Rosanna, as she felt the silence in the big old house. No number of girls could make the whistly noises Uncle Robert could when he ran upstairs three steps at a time or dashed down again. No one but Uncle Robert could tootle so entrancingly on the flute, or pick out such funny records for the Victrola. No one in the world would think to bring one a box of candy and leave it hidden in his hat, or just outside the door for one to find after dinner. No other Uncle would remember a little girl’s birthday once a month with a new dollar bill.