"I don't blame you," agreed Madaline. "Mean maids are so mean, and lovely ones are as nice as Jennie, and she's perfect. I hope she won't mind us coming up here?" a little anxiously.
"As long as we are getting back in such good time I am sure she won't,"
Cleo assured them.
"You know, girls," said Mary, stopping suddenly to better gain their entire attention, "I did not forget to bring some flowers back. I am sure Mrs. Dunbar would have loved them, and I should have so enjoyed giving her some, but I promised Grandie never to bring any through the streets. He is so queer about them, you see," and once more the secret topic was inadvertently touched upon. "I may have all I like always," she hurried to explain, "in fact I have many named, and they are my very own, but just yet I would not risk letting people know we have them."
"Oh," said Grace so simply, and so softly that the expression might have been an echo from the sigh of a passing summer breeze.
"But the queer wild bushes and things all growing around the windows?" asked Madaline. "Why do you have them near the glorious orchids?"
"Grandie thinks they are a protector. You can only see them when you look in through the glass, and so no one would ever guess they really hide orchids," Mary explained.
"And that is why you get all the wild roots from the fields?" Grace exclaimed, delighted to have solved that much of the mystery.
"Yes, that is partly the reason, but Grandie makes a fine fertilizer out of the roots, also. You see our beauties are very tender, and must have special heat and special nourishment."
"And how will you know your house is safe while you are away?" pressed
Cleo.
"Of course we don't know," Mary replied, "but there wasn't anything else to do. I feel you girls have done it all. I have been such a baby and, as Reda always insisted, I have seemed half asleep. But honestly, girls," and again Mary pulled them up to a standstill in their walk, so that her remarks would not possibly go astray. "I am like someone who really was asleep, and was just waking up. At least that is the way I feel."