The words were spoken with an effort, but they were true. Molly did feel just like that at the moment.
Mrs Aldworth smiled, and a very pretty colour came into her cheeks.
“I have been quite ill,” she said. “I have been ill and weak for an extraordinarily long time. At least so Marcia says; and Nurse Davenant is quite a tyrant in her way, and Dr Anstruther too; but to tell the truth, darling, I have never had an ache or pain, and I can’t imagine why people make such a fuss. But there, darling, I am glad to see you and to have you back again. You’ll come and sit with your old mother sometimes, won’t you, and you won’t think it a dreadful trial?”
“Never again,” said Molly.
“Go, Molly dear, for the present,” said Marcia, “and send Ethel in.”
Molly went almost on tiptoe across the room. She got behind the screen and opened the door.
“Go in,” she said in a whisper; “she’s looking wonderful.”
“Don’t whisper, girls,” said Marcia. “Come right in, Ethel.”
Ethel came in and also kissed her mother, and told her that she looked wonderfully well, and that she too was glad to be back, but she was more self-restrained than her sister, and more self-assured, putting a curb upon herself.
It was Nesta, after all, the youngest, the darling, who made her mother perfectly comfortable, for whatever her faults Nesta could not for a single moment be anything but natural. She came in soberly enough; but when she saw her parent she forgot everything, but just that this was Mothery, and once she had been a terrible beast to that same mother, and she made a little run across the room and dropped on her knees and took her mother’s hand and kissed it, and kissed it, and kissed it.