“It’s curious, isn’t it, when we were so happy before and loved one another almost more than any other three sisters ever did, that the moment you said our mother was alive it was as if all our life backward looked empty? We all three knew in an instant that we needed something terribly,” Mary said thoughtfully.
Mrs. Moulton glanced at her husband. “Be prepared, my dears, for not finding your mother quite like the mothers you know in Vineclad,” she said. “She has had slight experience in motherhood, and she has been the pet of a large public. It is quite possible that you may be called upon to mother her, rather than find her knowing how to mother you. But you are all three capable of this, each in her way.”
Then Jane replied with one of her flashing intuitions: “We’ll mother her until she learns how to have daughters.”
The three Garden girls turned back at this point, after Mary had received from Mr. Moulton instructions for sending Mark Walpole to him in the morning, and Mrs. Moulton had listened, with her quietly amused smile, to Mary’s hints of her discoveries in regard to Mark’s tastes.
“Win and I think he needs watching; he gets into day dreams and doesn’t look after himself very well,” Mary ended. And the girls bade the Moultons good-bye and turned toward home.
“Such a born little mother as sweet Mary is,” said Mrs. Moulton warmly, as she and her husband watched the slender figures running toward home like swift Atalantas. “Such a wonderfully beautiful, clever, and lovable trio! What daughters for a real mother to return to! And I have none.”
“Now, Althea, those children are almost your own,” said her husband hastily, for he never wanted his wife to remember that their one little daughter had lived but a few months. “And perhaps Lynette Garden will appreciate them. Twelve years is a long time. Lynette was no older than Win is now when she went away; she must have changed.”
“She was a pretty little Angora kitten,” said Mrs. Moulton, walking on. And her husband knew that Mrs. Garden’s defence must be left to herself when she came. Mary, Jane, and Florimel ran into the house and up the stairs to the sewing-room, calling: “Anne, Anne!” as they came.
Anne opened the door to them. They saw at a glance that she was idle, an almost unprecedented discovery, and her face was darkly flushed and swollen with tears.
“You know!” cried Mary, throwing herself into Anne’s open arms.