“Janie,” said Mary, lowering her voice and glancing toward the house, “madrina is so blue! I came upon her crying her heart out a little while ago. She would not tell me what was wrong, but I heard her trying to sing before that, and her voice is quite, quite gone! It’s the first time she has done more than hum. She couldn’t sing at all!”
“No need of asking why she cried, then!” said Jane, with a quiver in her own voice. “I thought she was sad lately and I wondered if Lord Kelmscourt had anything to do with it. Of course she didn’t have to send him away, but his coming must have brought back her old life to her.”
“Well,” said Florimel, with an expression that might have suited a maiden in the Roman Colosseum, with the lion pit just opened before her, “if madrina wants the lordly chauffeur, not to drive for her but to travel with her all the rest of her life I, for one, am not going to make a fuss. I thought I couldn’t stand it to have her marry him and go away again, even if we did visit her; we’d not go to England for good and leave our garden. But I will stand it; I’ll write him, myself, to come back, if she’s sorry she made him go.”
“He’s coming to Vineclad before he sails. Madrina isn’t so silly! She wants to sing. Can’t you see, Florimel, how fearful it is to be what she was; and then to be nothing—oh, I don’t mean that! The dear, little, charming madrina! But nothing the world knows about; just the Garden girls’ mother!” cried Jane.
“We all see, Janie,” said Mary sadly. “I’ve been thinking. Isn’t there something, some charity, for which we could raise money?”
Jane and Florimel stared at her. “Vineclad is pretty comfortable, you know; not much chance here to work for charity,” said Jane slowly. “Why, in all this wide world, did you say that, Mary? You’ve something in your brain; I know you!”
“You can’t know me very well, if you don’t think my brain is empty, Janie,” laughed Mary. “I was thinking that if we could get up an entertainment, for an object—you can’t seem to have entertainments just to entertain!—madrina might be interested. She could give some of her impersonations, in those costumes the girls were so crazy about, and she could train the girls—be deep in it, in all sorts of ways. I believe it would be good for her.”
Jane and Florimel were in raptures. “For all of us!” they cried together.
“Oh, Molly darling, what a good head you’d make for a sanitarium! You’d know just what to do for every single thing that ailed people!” added Florimel.
“It can’t be hard to know what any one needs when your thoughts are almost inside her mind; you love her so much, and long so to make her happy,” said Mary.