Instead of going away Jane came over and kissed Mary in the hollow of the back of her neck: “If I could make you feel wicked, you old lump of goodness, you, I’d follow you around every minute. ’Tisn’t fair that Mel and I have all the Garden badness—all the weediness,” she declared.
Just as Mary and Jane ran downstairs, both fresh and lovely in pale lawns, Win came in at the front door.
“What’s up?” he asked at once. “Mr. Moulton telephoned the office for me to be home early, that he was coming here to tell us all something, and would like me to be here, if I could be. What’s up?”
“We don’t know,” began Mary, slightly disturbed, feeling that this must portend more than the naming of a new hybrid. Jane took the words out of her mouth. “We don’t know,” she said, “but I’m sure that we have had a lot of money come somehow, or else we’re so poor, everything swept away, that we’ve got to be cash girls, at four dollars a week.”
“Too much,” said Win, shaking his head. “Red-haired girls at three-fifty; that’s the rule.”
“They’re coming, anyway, Mr. and Mrs. Moulton are coming,” Florimel called over the banisters as she hurriedly buttoned her waist in the back and pulled it down into place after she had done this. “We’ll soon know what it is. Mother was English, wasn’t she? Maybe we’re earls, I mean dukes, duchesses—oh, noble!”
“We are noble, Mel,” said Win gravely; “very noble. If we weren’t noble, my dear, we should long ago have dealt with you as you deserve.”
Mark was nowhere to be seen, though he was staying this second night in Hollyhock House, having arranged to begin his service to Mr. Moulton on the next day.
“He’s a nice boy to take himself off, but Mr. Moulton can’t have anything to say that any one might not hear,” said Win, going out to meet the visitors. Yet when Win came back, stepping aside to allow the girls’ guardian to precede him into the house, there was an instant perception of something out of the ordinary on the part of the three Garden girls. It was so strong that it was as if they had not thought of it before; Mr. Moulton’s face was quite red, his manner distinctly nervous, and his wife looked greatly disturbed. Mary found it difficult to greet them, while Jane, who was like an electrical wire in receiving impressions, turned pale and put out her hand to her old friends without speaking.
“My dears,” Mr. Moulton began, having cleared his throat portentously, “I have an extraordinary announcement to make to you; nothing bad, so don’t be frightened, but it will certainly amaze you. I don’t know how to begin. Do you know your mother’s name?”