A moment later, as I passed through the hall, I could hear Mamie singing, "And she's going back to her Daddy, and her home, home, home!"—to some impromptu rigmarole tune of her own.
Soon after this she took the train to the nearest town and came back laden with packages—all manner of cheap household stuff picked up at the five-and-ten-cent store. It occurred to me that she might as well have a small empty trunk of mine that there was in the attic. She was delighted with the gift, and wore the key of it on a chain around her neck.
"I'd rather have that key than a locket!" she said, putting her hand over it affectionately. It was so that she repaid you tenfold. "It's wonderful," she would say, every little while, in joyful anticipation, "having your own home!"
For myself, despite many unmitigated realities, I could not help feeling that I was living in something of a wonder story. Who knew but that, with those extraordinary powers of hers, which so readily rose above fact, who knew but that she might rub that key some day as Aladdin his lamp, and turn us all into triumphant heroes and heroines.
Mamie did not forget, as I said good-bye to her in the big city terminal where I finally left them, to give me parting advice, sisterly sympathy:—
"Now, don't you go and get discouraged. I know you've had troubles. Well, I've had trouble enough, too. You just keep right on, and hold your head high. There's no telling what'll come to them that holds their heads high. Look at me!"
I looked at her and could have felt convinced. Then we said our good-byes, and away they went. The last I saw of them in the crowd was Anne's hand still waving loyally to me over Mamie's shoulder quite a long time after her eyes had lost me.
I missed them exceedingly; and the blue-birds of that second spring hardly made up to me for the absence of Anne's birdlike voice. The new maid, Margaret, was interesting enough, but no one could ever quite take the place of those others.
With all this in mind, you will realize with what a sinking of the heart I found that there was more than Mamie to be missed. There could be no doubt in the matter, for there had been no outsider in the house at all of late; therefore it could be due to no other magic than hers that there was a grievous lessening of my scant stores of household belongings—sheets and pillow-cases, towels and a pair of blankets, napkins and, I think, a table-cloth, and some muffin-rings and kitchen conveniences, and I do not know what else.
Little bits of reality came drifting back to me—the key kept so faithfully always around her neck; my own gift of the trunk; and the sentiment—say now, if you like, the sentimentality—with which I had noted the fact that even that rather small trunk was too large for her poor belongings.