“I do hope everything will go right,” said Mary, as the travellers’ escort walked slowly homeward through the Vineclad streets, pleasantly shady in the July heat.
“Oh, Win can’t go wrong, with the car picked out at home! If he engages an unsatisfactory man, we aren’t obliged to keep him,” said Mrs. Garden. “How frightfully warm it is! We never have such intemperate heat at home in England.”
Involuntarily Mary’s troubled eyes met Mr. and Mrs. Moulton’s, regarding her kindly.
“Mary was anxious about the children, not the car, Mrs. Garden—Lynette,” said Mrs. Moulton.
“Mary is an anxious little hen in the Garden patch,” laughed her mother.
“I’m sure I don’t know what could happen to two such great girls as Jane and Florimel.”
“Of course nothing could happen to them, with Win another clucking hen, as bad as I am!” cried Mary, visibly glad to seize upon this reason for her youthful mother’s refusing to be anxious about the girls.
A telegram announcing the arrival of her trio in New York, giving the address which would connect them by the magic wire with home and Vineclad, comforted inexperienced Mary by anchoring her thoughts of them to a definite spot, out of the space which had swallowed them up.
The four girls—Dorothy, Nanette, Gladys, and Audrey—came to tea one day; Mr. and Mrs. Moulton invited Mrs. Garden and Mary to tea with them on another of the three days of Mary’s loneliness. On the third Chum got a bone crosswise down her throat and it took so long to save her from imminent death, the adventure was so exciting, that the whole day seemed filled and curtailed by it. Consequently the time of the New York visit really did not seem long although it overlapped into the fourth day. A telephone message came from Win announcing that they were staying overnight, some sixty miles from home, held up by a puncture and too tired to press on.