“Win told me,” said Anne, holding Mary, dearest to her of the sisters, if she had a preference. “I have always wondered how this day would come, and when.”
“You knew our mother was alive, and never told us!” cried Jane.
“Janie, I’ve written her at odd times, telling her how you got on; she asked me to when she went away. What was the use of telling you she was alive? You could not have been with her, and you would have fretted after her. You might have come not to love her if you were wanting her and could not get her to come to you, nor take you there. It was better to let you grow up contented; Mr. and Mrs. Moulton were strict in requiring me to keep still. But I always knew this day would come. She’ll be here soon, my little lady, and what a happy time it will be!” Anne poured out her words with profound emotion.
“Oh, Anne, yes! What a happy time it will be! What a happy time it is!” cried Mary. “We shall have all we can do to get ready for her. Do you think the house has to be repapered? Do we have to get new furniture, do you think? And what room shall she have?”
“You know, Mary, the big south room was the room she used to have,” said Anne. “That is why I kept it for a guest-room: I thought she’d be back one of these days and it would be best for her to slip into her old place. You three babies were born in that room and there she used to rock you, the short time that she had you to rock. Florimel she enjoyed but a year. I can see her this minute with that black-haired midget in her arms, and you and Jane playing beside her; Florimel’s hair was black and plenty from the first! The small room off it was her dressing-room.”
“You’ve often told us, Anne,” said Jane. “Do you think it needs doing over?”
“I’d rather the old furniture was there for her to see,” said Anne. “Of course the paper she had is gone and what’s there is faded. I’ve a piece of her wall paper in the garret. Why not send it to one of the big dealers in New York and see how near he can come to matching it? I believe the nearer like the way she found her room when the doctor had it ready for her, and brought her to it, only three years older than her oldest girl is now, the more like that she finds it now the less she’ll feel that you three tall creatures are not the babies she left behind her.”
“Oh, dear; I’m so sorry we are so near grown up!” sighed Mary.
“But she did leave us, and stayed twelve years. She can’t expect to find us just learning to walk!” exclaimed Florimel, who was more inclined to remember that this fabulous mother had gone away from her children than was either of the others.
The next morning Mark went to begin his labours with Mr. Moulton. The Garden girls were so interested in his installation that this would have been an absorbing event had it not been that Jane was in the library, occupied with wrapping and addressing a large strip of the paper which had been on her mother’s room when she came to it, a bride, and Mary and Florimel were upstairs turning the room topsy-turvy, deciding what changes to make in its furnishing.