“You don’t have to be glad separately; it’s all one,” said Florimel wisely.
“Old chap, I’m too glad to say how glad!” cried Win, slapping Mark on the back with such vigour that it had a tonic effect.
Mrs. Garden had not spoken, but the touch of her hand on Mark’s shoulder was eloquent of her rejoicing sympathy.
Mark faced them all again, wiping his eyes, unashamed. “I didn’t cry when I was down and out,” he said. “A fellow doesn’t feel so much like crying when he’s got his teeth set, and he’s standing things. But this—this heavenly kindness gets me.”
“It would any one,” said Mary. “But it isn’t all kindness, Mark. Mr. Moulton was anxious, troubled when he could not see any one who would be likely to finish what he had begun; you know what that means to a scientist, for you are one yourself, in your younger way. And Mrs. Moulton has been lonely. I can see that she leans on you as much, in her way, as her husband does for the botanical work. They’re very fond of you and this is just as good for them as for you—not that I want to belittle what they do for you, but it wouldn’t be right for you to think of it as in the least a charity.”
“I don’t, Mary; I see it just as you do,” said Mark. “But you can’t understand, not even you people who are so quick to understand things, what it means to belong. My father and I were chums. When he died it wasn’t so much that I was left poor, when I had supposed we were well off, but the relatives I had rather did me, and I didn’t belong to a soul. Take a dog; it isn’t enough to feed him. A good dog craves a master, he’s got to belong to some one. I knew a lost dog once that some people fed; he wasn’t hungry, but he was heart-broken till he was adopted by some one who loved him. In a week you wouldn’t have known him; chirked right up, belonged again, you see. Now if a dog feels that, so does a boy. You’ve all been like old friends to me, the Moultons couldn’t have been better, but I didn’t belong to any one. Mr. and Mrs. Moulton told me about this only a little while ago, at supper time, but I know it’s making me over already. Oh, my soul, what a birthday present!”
“You’re going to accept the conditions?” hinted Mrs. Garden, with her little look of mischief.
“Accept them! I don’t believe I am; I think they simply swallow me up. I would rather do something of the sort Mr. Moulton is doing than be Romulus and Remus and found Rome! Think of it! I used to intend to go to college, and then devote my life to science, but father was killed in the fire and the whole game was up, college and affording to work at a science—botany—and all! And then I wandered into Vineclad, looking for a bookkeeper’s job which I heard was here, and walked right into the fulfilment of my ambition! Talk about our lives being laid out for us! Did you ever know anything like it? And Mr. and Mrs. Moulton’s adopted son! The finest people! And everything on earth I could desire made possible, just when no one could have seen a chance for me!” Mark’s eyes as they rested on Mary were so alight that hers fell.
“Lucky isn’t the only one lucky,” said Florimel, rising with Lucky in her arms; the cat always found her after a while and cuddled down in her lap wherever she was seated. Florimel held him close to Mark’s face. “Kiss him and tell him you and he are twin brothers in luckiness! But don’t you forget, Mark Walpole, that Florimel Garden made you come home with her that day, you and Chum, both.”
“Indeed I’ll not forget it, Miss Blackbird,” said Mark. “But I won’t kiss Lucky; I’ll shake his paw instead. We are triplets in luck, Lucky, Chum, and I! And it is the cold fact that the littlest Garden girl was our mascot, all three of us.”