“We’re going to keep this low rocker because our mother held us in it when we were babies,” Mary announced when Mark came upstairs to look for her and say good-bye. “Don’t you think it would be fine to have the chairs cushioned with a very good chintz, to harmonize with the wall paper? Do you like that table exactly? Are you really going now to Mr. Moulton, Mark? Of course you are; I’m dazed. Please don’t mind. No, we won’t say good-bye here; we’re going down to see you out of the door, though of course you will come through it nearly every day this summer. But we must see you go to seek your fortune, and wish you luck. I’ve waked up at last! When you came upstairs I couldn’t seem to understand why you came, or anything!”
“I know; you looked right through me, all the way across the ocean to England,” laughed Mark. “I didn’t know you could talk so fast, Mary! I don’t mind your forgetting me. It’s a big thing that’s happened to you, and I’m a good deal stirred up, myself, to think you’ve found out your mother’s alive and is coming back. I know how I’d feel if I could hear my mother hadn’t died, though I never knew my mother, either. But I knew my father; we were chums.”
“What a nice boy you are, Mark Walpole!” said Mary, frankly holding out her hand. “This is another bit of luck this spring! I’m glad we’ve found you for a friend.”
“We’ve found him! H’m!” said Florimel, with a withering scorn that might have withered more effectually if her face had been less dusty from rubbing it with hands that had been pushing against backs of pieces of furniture. “I guess no one found him but me—in the bulrushes down in town! I wish your name was Moses, Mark; it would be so funny and fitting.”
“I believe I’d just as lief have a name that isn’t so close a fit to that one incident, Florimel. Maybe Mark will fit something else that happens to me; it sounds like a name that could come in pat,” said Mark.
“Of course!” cried Florimel. “You’ll discover some old weed, or something, in botany, and make your mark! But I’d love to call you Moses.”
“You may, Pharaoh’s daughter. I don’t mind. But I can’t crave to be called that by every one,” said Mark, and turned back at the foot of the stairs to put out his hand to Mary. “Even if I am going to see you again this evening, and nearly every day, I believe the time to thank you is when I start out on my own hook. I can’t do it,” he said. “You’ve been no end good to me, and if I didn’t know that so well, I could say it better.”
“Please never say it nor think it,” said Mary. “You came along and the rest of it followed you. It did itself. I love to believe everything flows along, like little waves, one after another!—planned for us, you know.”
“Good-bye, Mary Garden. I’d like any plan that had you in it,” said Mark hurriedly, as if he hated to say it.
“Mark is nice; he’s gone, Jane,” said Mary, coming in to where Jane was busily writing the wall paper firm about the paper.