“Not if one sings till nearly midnight and has supper after that, or dances, or entertains her friends,” said Mrs. Garden. “Oh, my heart, my heart! And now I sing no more! Girls, I can’t believe it! It is like a horrid dream. I waken trying to sing, or else I waken, to cry and cry, from a dream that I am singing again and the audience are clapping, clapping me, crying: ‘Bravo, linnet!’ They called me ‘the linnet’ at home, because my name was Lynette, and they loved my singing. Oh, me, oh, me!” She sank back with her face turned to her pillow; her daughters saw her delicate body heave with sobs. Mary and Jane exchanged looks of distress.
“I think I can understand how hard it is, mother,” Jane said, timidly kneeling beside the bed and touching one slender shoulder. “But maybe your voice will come back. Everything grows in our lovely garden! And we mean to take such care of you! Won’t you get used to us, and think it isn’t so very bad not to hear applause, when your three girls are admiring you as hard as they can?” she whispered.
“And how would you like to get up this one morning and come out with us, just to see the garden with the dew on it, and hear the birds?” Mary pleaded, following Jane and stroking her mother’s hair with the hand that had been endowed with beauty and a healing touch. “I think it would make you feel as though nothing on earth mattered—for a while, at least. And you should have coffee out there, and rolls, or tea, if that’s what you like better. You’d love to be the birds’ audience this time, little clever mother.”
Mrs. Garden turned and looked up at them with a quick movement and a laugh, though tears wet her cheeks; it was like one of Jane’s swift changes.
“What wheedlers! And what determination!” she cried. “Very well, then, I’ll give in, and do the unheard-of: get up before six in the morning and go outdoors! Only wait till I write my English friends what little monsters I found over here, ready to drag me to torture! You two will have to be my maids and help me dress. I’m the most helpless creature, and you wouldn’t let me bring a maid over. I give you due notice: I’m going to get one here!”
“You shall have three, mother, if you like! First try us, and see if we can’t hook, and button, and brush you! We want to so dreadfully!” cried Jane. “That would be three, counting Florimel, though that wasn’t what I meant.” She dropped on her knees again, and began putting on her mother’s stockings and shoes, while Mary busied herself with sorting out the hairpins and small belongings on the dressing-table.
Both girls had become painfully shy and awkward, plainly trying to conquer it and make their mother feel, what was true, that they delighted in waiting upon her, but were too ill at ease to reveal their pleasure. Mrs. Garden, on the contrary, grew merry and playful. She had decided that the adventure of rising at what she called “the middle of the night” was wholly funny, and she chattered and laughed throughout her dressing, without a hint of her former sadness.
Florimel added herself to the other two “Abigails,” as Mrs. Garden called her lady’s maids, and claimed for her share of the service her mother’s pretty light-brown hair. “It’s awfully soft and fluffy,” said Florimel admiringly. “Is it the shampoo?”
“Eggs, my dear,” said her mother. “The last maid I had would use nothing else. You don’t imagine that’s why I get up with the chickens—that the eggs have gone to my head, in another sense?”
“Perhaps you recited Chantecler; did you, mother?” suggested Mary. “You did recite, as well as sing, didn’t you?”