Mary looked at her guardian, her eyes so full of appeal that he paused.
“What is it, Mary, dear?” he asked.
“Nobody has been blaming our mother all this time, have they? She is——” Mary could not frame her question.
“She is an artist, Mary, and everything she does is worth doing, if that is what you would like to ask,” Mr. Moulton assured her. “She sings good music and does clever entertaining; every one praises her. She is a child and an artist; she could not be domestic, and, as long as her babies were comfortable and safe, she saw no reason why she should deny her nature and stay here. We cannot understand that——”
“Yes, I can!” Jane interrupted him to cry. “I couldn’t leave an animal to suffer, but I can see why she had to go back. Isn’t it wonderful, Mary?”
“Ah, but, Jane, here’s the hard part of it!” said Mr. Moulton. “You see her days of giving and getting joy in her own way were not long. Lynette is only thirty-seven now, and, though that may sound decrepit to you, it is young. And your mother’s voice is gone, her career ended. She caught a severe cold, was seriously ill for some months this last winter, and when she recovered it was but a partial recovery—her beautiful voice was completely gone. So now she is laid on the shelf. She wrote to me——”
“She wants to come home!” cried Mary, starting to her feet, and Jane and Florimel were on theirs as quickly.
“Sit down, children; she is not outside,” smiled Mr. Moulton. “She wrote me that ‘if her little girls were not angry with her for having cast them off for her career, if they would receive her, now that her career was ended and she had nothing but them to turn to, she would like to come here.’ She added that she realized that it had a contemptible look to turn to her children only when nothing else was left, but she wanted them now, and hoped that they would forgive her. She also said, quite simply and, I think, sincerely, that she ‘had to go.’”
“When will she get here?” cried Mary, still clasping and unclasping her hands, still white to the lips.
“Will any one have to go to get her?” demanded Jane. “I’ll go.”