Mona's memory of it all was very different. In those days there had been muddle, dust, grease everywhere, the grate was always greasy and choked with ashes, the table sloppy and greasy, the floor unwashed, even unswept, the dressers with more dust than anything else on them. Mona could scarcely believe that the same place and things could look so different.
"Oh, how nice it all is," she said in a voice full of admiration, and Lucy smiled with pleasure. She knew that many girls would not have admitted any improvement even if they had seen it.
"Shall we go upstairs now?" she said. "I've got my breath again," and she led the way up the steep little staircase, which Mona remembered so well.
"You know the way to your old room, don't you?"
Mona walked ahead to it, but at the door she drew up with a cry of delight. "Oh, Mother!" she turned to say with a beaming face, and without noticing that she had called her by the name about which she and granny had debated so long.
Lucy noticed it though, and coloured with pleasure. She had felt more shy than had Mona, about suggesting what her stepchild should call her. "Thank you, dear, for calling me that," she said, putting her arm about her and kissing her. "I didn't know, I wondered how you would feel about it."
But Mona was too delighted with everything she saw to feel anything but pleasure and gratitude then. The walls had been papered with a pretty rose-covered paper, the shabby little bed had been painted white. Pretty pink curtains hung at the window, and beside the bed stood a small bookcase with all Mona's own books in it. Books that she had left lying about torn and shabby, and had thought would have been thrown away, or burnt, long ago. Lucy had collected them, and mended and cleaned them. And Lucy, who had brought to her new house many of the ideas she had gathered while in service at the Squire's, had painted the furniture white too, to match the bed.
Mona had never in her life before seen anything so pretty and dainty. "Isn't it lovely!" she cried, sitting down plump on the clean white quilt, and crushing it. "I can't believe it's for me." She looked about her with admiring eyes as she dragged off her hat and tossed it from her, accidentally knocking over the candlestick as she did so.
Lucy stooped and picked up both. The candlestick was chipped, the hat was certainly not improved.
"The chipped place will not show much," said Lucy in her gentle, tired voice, "but you've crushed the flowers in your hat."