Rosie cleaned house with a fervor that was more like a fever, especially that no one save herself could see a speck in all her domain. But to Rosie's mind, house-cleaning was necessary before any event; it was to her a ceremonial, not unlike the ablutions of the Jews.
As to Margery's mother, she performed no unusual tasks, but went about the ordinary ones with such a happy, brooding look that it betrayed how much she had missed her eldest, and how ill a mother can spare one child, even from a large flock.
Every corner of the Ark was filled with glad expectancy, and the country was growing lovelier every moment. The summer boarders who had thronged into the mountains were daily crowding the little Crestville station platform, returning to the two great cities which poured their citizens into Pennsylvania for the summer.
The Scollards watched these crowds with a feeling of pity, to their own unbounded surprise, for they had not realized how entirely they were recovered from their first homesickness. It seemed hard to be going back now that everything was at its best, and hourly growing better—if a paradox that seemed to be true might be permitted.
"Perfect weather for Margery," said Mrs. Scollard with profound satisfaction.
"Expressly for her," Miss Bradbury agreed with a smile, but she looked as pleased with the prospect of getting back their gentle girl as her mother could ask.
"We ought not to have called Rosie the dove; if we hadn't we could have said that Margery was the dove, returning after many days," suggested Laura.
"Yes; she's the dove-like one of this family," Bob agreed.
"I wonder what she may have found on the face of the waters, on her first flight without me. Of course she has written faithfully, but letters do not tell one much. I hope she will not return less our dove-like Margery," said her mother.
"No fear, motherums," cried Happie with conviction. "Only an anxious mother could imagine Margery changed. She is never anything but her quiet self; she never puts on—nor takes off"—Happie paused to chuckle a little over her logical new expression—"never puts on nor takes off airs, nor does anything but just go on breathing and being the way she was meant to breathe and to be, and nothing on this earth could make her different. She's a gentle girl, but she's not one bit easily influenced. Margery would be just the same Margery if she were made empress of the French as suddenly as Josephine was, or if she were put down in a tenement to make alpaca coats and eat limburger cheese all her days."