"Grandie! Grandie, dear!" cried Mary, almost running to throw her arms around him.
"Mary, Mary darling!" he answered, extending his hands to meet her embrace.
Cleo held back. She would not intrude on that moment of happiness, as the two, speechless with affection, held each other in fond embrace. Then Mary threw up her head to look in the face of the man who seemed the only parent and protector she had known for so long a time.
"How perfectly lovely you look, Grandie!" she exclaimed. "Why, whatever did they do to you? You—look so—different."
She was studying a change, unable to name it, but impossible to escape it. He was different. His eyes were bright, and they looked at her with a focus directed from a clear mind.
"And you, baby!" he answered. "At last you have taken on the sunlight.
What is it—with you?"
"Oh, my pink dress!" Mary answered promptly. "See, here is Cleo in her sea-green, and the other girls outside are wearing, one a blue and the other yellow. You always loved the bright colors so, Grandie, but you know Reda would not let me have anything but white."
"Oh, yes, that was it," he replied, including a smiling greeting to Cleo in his pleasant bow. "Yes, Reda wanted white, and it always made me think of death."
"Now, Grandie, don't you think I am waking up, if not actually awake?" and Mary made a pretty little curtsey with a sweep of her skirts. "Oh, you won't know me. All the ghosts of our tropical home are melting away. The girls are too lovely, and Mrs. Audrey Dunbar is simply the most charming woman——"
"Dunbar, did you say, Mary? Dunbar?" he repeated a question of memory in his voice.