Her tongue was still quite thick and her head shook a little as she spoke, but the old eagle sat as erect as ever, the brim of her garden hat flapping up and down in the breeze as it always had.
The girls felt sorry for the aged woman whose early life had been filled with sorrows and disappointments and her last years poisoned by scheming relatives who desired her money.
“So these are the Motor Maids,” went on Mrs. Paxton-Steele. “Do you know, my dears, why I asked you to spend one of your golden hours with a stricken old woman like me? It is because I want to thank you. You have taught me the second great lesson of my life. The first one I learned when I was a young woman. The second one now comes to me on the brink of the grave.
“A vain, cruel, stupid bully! A selfish old woman, eh?”
Elinor flushed. How disrespectful those words seemed to her now!
But the old eagle chuckled to herself.
“I have certainly been all those things,” she continued, “and I want to thank you, Mistress Elinor, for speaking out your mind. You might have added blind, too. I have been blind—blind.
“My poor boys who have been dead so long, have been restored to me in their own sons, and I am very happy.”
Here she paused and closed her eyes to hide the tears which had welled into them.
“Yes, I am happy,” she went on. “They are fine boys, both of them. And all of this I owe to the Motor Maids. You have done what I could not do. You have righted a great wrong and reunited a broken, scattered family.