“Very likely Florimel is in mischief this minute,” Mary added consolingly. “She’s always likely to be, and it’s a good while since she has travelled off a walk.”
“How did you happen to name Mel that, madrina?” asked Jane. “Nobody else has that name.”
“I thought it pretty. The Gardens named you two; it was my turn to name a baby. Flori has something to do with flowers, and mel is Latin for honey, isn’t it? I thought it combined prettily with Garden. It’s in Spenser’s ‘Fairy Queen,’” Mrs. Garden replied.
“Spenser’s ‘Fairy Queen!’” Jane’s repetition expressed surprise.
“Oh, I never read it,” her mother cried hastily. “It’s far too long and old-time English to read, but I found out Florimel was in that poem. I always liked to feel that nice books were around me, and to hear them alluded to, but nobody but a teacher of English literature, I should fancy, would read Spenser.”
Mary tipped her head back and laughed with great enjoyment. “You’re such a funny little personage, Mrs. Garden! You often say what other people think, but don’t dare to say,” she cried.
“Oh, well, that’s one advantage in having a career all your own; one doesn’t have to bother about what other people do. I was a singer and entertainer; I never had to read books to talk about them, you see. Lots of people read what they think they ought to read; I always read exactly what I wanted to read, and let the rest go,” explained Mrs. Garden frankly. “Don’t you know any young people? No girls come here, no boys, except that nice young secretary of Mr. Moulton’s, whom you say Florimel found along the wayside—like a flower! Are your friends keeping away from me? Because I wish they wouldn’t! Of course I’ve been having just the rest I needed since I came, but it might be—don’t you think?—the least bit dull to go on forever this way. I remember I found Vineclad overwhelmingly dull when I lived here. Aren’t there any pleasant people who will call on me, older than you are, but not so elderly, so sedately elderly as Mr. and Mrs. Moulton?” Mrs. Garden gave her daughters a glance like a naughty child venturing on mild disrespect to her elders. More than ever the relation between this mother and her children seemed to be reversed, as Mary received the glance and its suggestion with precisely that anxious air of helplessness so many mothers wear when their children threaten to prove difficult.
“Why, yes, mother dear, there are a good many young people in Vineclad who come to see us,” she replied. “They are letting us have you all to ourselves at first, you know. We don’t know them as we should have known them if Mr. Moulton had not been obliged to carry out father’s ideas of education. Girls who are taught at home are a little separated from the young people in school. But we see a good deal of the Vineclad girls and boys. And you will have lots of callers, of course, after people think you are ready for them. I don’t know whether or not Vineclad is dull. I suppose it is, when you think about it and have lived somewhere else. But there are lovely people here. Didn’t you know some you liked twelve years ago? They’d be here now, I’m sure.”
“So am I sure of it! I fancy Vineclad people are rooted!” laughed her mother.
“They used to call on me; perfectly nice creatures, but—Mary, they used to want to teach me stitches and recipes because I was so young! And that was precisely why stitches and recipes did not interest me!”