“I think Win is as nice as a boy can be. He’s so indifferent about it, too; doesn’t seem to think he’s good looking and clever, and he couldn’t be kinder, nor more truthful and straight. Sometimes he strikes me all over again, as if I’d just met him! He’s a splendid boy, honestly,” she said.
“When I was here before, I mean when I first came here, your father used to say that Win would grow up to be the kind of man that never seems to do anything in particular, but which quietly fills a big place in the community. Win was but a little lad then, yet his half-brother was perfectly right about him. We all think that a great man is one with great talents, or who achieves great deeds, but, after all, if one who has a great heart, a great conscience, great truth, great steadfastness, great loyalty, isn’t a great man, I wonder who is? And Win has all these things,” said Mrs. Garden.
“Why, madrina, how nice!” cried Mary, delighted. “I never had the least idea that you cared so much about Win.”
“Win didn’t care so much about me, Mary, when I came home,” said Mrs. Garden, with a smile. “He had been devoted to me when I lived here, but he could not forgive me for leaving you for my beloved work in the world. I don’t blame him; he could not understand what slight excuse there was for it. I see now that its principal justification was that I was not prepared to bring you up; I had to learn. But now Win is forgiving me, and, I hope, getting fonder of me again.”
“Little madrina, you are growing up, my child! You are almost as old as Jane, sometimes, and we all know how profoundly old Jane is, in her thoughtful mining into things! Come along, little Garden girls, little Lynette, Janie, Florimel! We must begin our Slumber Day ceremonies!” cried Mary.
Arming themselves with a trowel apiece, the Garden girls, to follow Mary’s example and counting Mrs. Garden as one of them, went out of the house. They marched to the great ox-heart cherry tree which gave its shade to one corner of the grassy end of the garden where the seats stood, and which gave its delicious fruit abundantly, late in June, to the Gardens and to their neighbours. Here the girls paused. “We first sing the lullaby Slumber Day, you know,” Florimel explained to her mother.
Under the tree, with trowels waving in a cradle motion, the girls sang “Kücken’s Lullaby.” It was really pleasing in effect; Florimel sang acceptably, Jane’s voice was extraordinary, and Mary’s alto was sweet and deep.
“We are sorry we have not started in with another lullaby, but we sang this long ago, when we didn’t know any other,” said Florimel apologetically in response to her mother’s praise. “That’s always our opening hymn.”
The forenoon passed in work that was solid, although varied by fantastic ceremonies. As, for instance, “The Gladiola Gladness” was a triumphant dance in which the gladiola bulbs were borne aloft in a basket, in a whirling dance, celebrating their past blossoming.
“Jane does this because we think she’s most like a gladiolus, thin and reddish and brilliant,” Florimel explained.