“Mercy!” said Mary involuntarily. “All that time! Audrey won’t graduate; she’ll cut off half the course. Perhaps I oughtn’t to say so, girls ought to stand by one another, but you’re not conceited, Win, so I’m going to tell you that all of the girls feel sure Audrey likes you a great deal, and only seems to like her college plan better, because she’s so sure of you. There; it’s out! Of course Audrey honestly longs to study; I don’t mean she doesn’t,” added Mary hastily.
The call on Mr. and Mrs. Moulton was a failure. Mary’s whole mind was turned backward to the hearthside at home, where she knew that the Englishman was doing his best to urge her little mother to leave her fireside, and come to preside over his dignified and important house.
“How long ought we stay, do you think, Win?” Mary asked after a half-hour, and Mr. Moulton lay back in his chair to laugh at her.
“‘The Considerate Daughter, or The Tables Turned,’ a farce in one act, by Miss Mary Garden, with the author in the title rôle!” he chuckled, turning to his wife to share his amusement.
“Really, Mary, there is no reason why you should feel called upon to smooth the way to an event which you dread,” observed Mrs. Moulton.
“It isn’t that, so much,” said candid Mary. “I want to feel sure that I didn’t act as horrid as I feel about it; that’s one thing. And another is, if, by great good luck, madrina should decide to stay with us I’d want to feel we got her honestly; that we hadn’t tried to keep her by tricks.”
“That’s the way to feel,” Mr. Moulton approved her. “If you can’t win a game without peeping at the cards, or slyly moving your ball with your toe, then by all means lose the game. It’s worse than lost if it’s won by tricks, hey, Mary?”
“I suppose that’s what we feel, sir,” smiled Mary, rising to go.
Mark accompanied her and Win homeward, as a matter of course. “Well, I’m sure I hope with all my heart your mother will not leave you for this lordly chauffeur of yours,” Mark said as they sauntered along. “She seems very young and merry to settle down here in Vineclad. To be sure you are a great deal younger, yet it would seem natural for you to settle down here, all three of you. But you belong to Vineclad, whereas your mother seems like a bit broken off of another world.”
“That’s just it, Mark!” Win said. “That’s Lynette.”