Happy looked totally unable to say half she thought or felt. "I don't believe Laura will ever be good for anything else," she said sincerely. "And it is too good an offer to refuse—Mrs. Stewart being herself, and a woman to whom mother would trust Laura."
"If I went," said Laura speaking rapidly and only half articulately in her excitement, "I would do everything Mrs. von Siegeslied bade me, and be far better than I was here to deserve it. Girls, you don't know what it means! Don't let mamma say no! Beg for me to be allowed to go."
CHAPTER XIX
PATTY-PANS NO MORE
"It is such an important decision! I make it, but I instantly unmake it. It is hard to trust a little thirteen years old girl to go away from us all to Germany!" exclaimed Mrs. Scollard. Her voice was full of anxiety and her eyes were troubled. It was the last minute; they were expecting the von Siegeslieds every instant to receive the answer to their offer to take Laura to be educated in music. Her mother had decided for and against it many times in the two days in which the family had discussed it. The last decision had been that Laura was to go, but now, with the footfall of Laura's abductor audible, in imagination, on the stairs, once more her mother found herself reverting to the impossibility of giving consent.
Laura had betaken herself to her room and to tears, entirely unable to see her hopes wavering.
"It isn't as though Laura were good for anything else, motherums," repeated Happie. She kept coming back to this argument, which was not meant unkindly, though it had rather that ring. It struck her as a sound argument, for Laura being created especially for music it must be right to fall into line with this opportunity to develop her.
"Charlotte, my dear," Aunt Keren began patiently, for the unnumbered time. "I have known little Mrs. Stew—von Siegeslied a great while, and you know that I would not let one of our children go away in untried hands. She will train Laura up just as you would have done. As to her husband, don't you think that a man who has suffered bitterly from giving himself over to the selfishness of genius will be a good corrective to our little girl's inclination to selfishness, and to counting her art more than her heart? We all know what he is as a musical guide. And as to the obligation, Mr. von Siegeslied has set his heart on taking Laura. It will really be a favor to him to let him have the girl to train, and, while his wife would rather steal Happie, or Polly or Penny, still she will rejoice in having any one of the little Scollards to bring young girlhood into her home. Once more, Charlotte, while I shrink from the responsibility of a decision, still some one must take it, and I strongly advise you to ship your third girl to Germany."
Bob whistled "Die Wacht am Rhein" under his breath, absent-mindedly. His mother turned appealing eyes on him, and just then the bell rang.