“With her car and other paraphernalia; of course!” agreed Joan. “Since we are distributing pity, Motherums, we’d better shed some on Kit and Anne, if they are interested in each other, for Miss Carrington would certainly make the course of their true love run uncommonly rough! I must go home to my daughter. Isn’t it thrilling to think that we may have seen the curtain rise on an old-fashioned love drama, with a rival, a stern parent—an aunt comes to the same thing when she holds the hero’s inheritance—the princess whom the young lover should marry, everything properly cast! Anne, you witch-child, you are an uncanny elf! Good-bye, dear.”
Joan kissed her mother and her sister and was gone.
Anne stood scowling at the table cover, motionless for several minutes, unseeing, lost in thought.
“Anne, dear, what is it?” her mother aroused her.
“I was thinking this was the most Annest town I ever saw: Miss Anne Carrington, Anne Dallas, little Anne Berkley; prob’ly lots more,” she said. “When I’m confirmed I’m going to take Ursula for my new name, ’cause there isn’t one of them. Then you can call me that, so everybody’ll know me apart.”
“I can tell you apart, childie, this minute! Come here, little Anne, and let me rock you, though your legs are uncomfortably long for this low chair.” Mrs. Berkley held out her arms invitingly and Anne ran into them.
“Another thing I was thinking when you and Joan were talking about Mr. Latham and Ki—Mr. Carrington—all wanting to marry her. I think we’re not half sorry enough for all the trouble everybody makes God, all wanting the same thing and praying about it! It must be awful to have to say no to such lots of ’em! And He can’t say yes to more’n half when there’s two, just even, you see. It makes me feel sorry for Him. Is that a sin, Mother?” Anne lifted her head out of her mother’s shoulder and gazed at her with profoundly sad eyes.
Her mother kissed the lids down over those great dark eyes. Sometimes her heart ached with fear of this strange child’s future. Then again Anne was so reassuringly human that the pang of anxiety over her unearthliness was swallowed up in anxiety of the opposite sort.
So now Mrs. Berkley kissed down the lids over the meditative eyes and murmured comfortingly:
“Little Anne must remember that God knows best.”