"She wouldn't be satisfied in our world, Mardy; she never was. So isn't it best to be glad that another has opened to her?" suggested Rob.
"Wise Robin!" smiled her mother. "I suppose it is."
Mrs. Grey had telegraphed to Arthur Stanhope her permission to come, as he had asked her to do. A box of rare and costly flowers preceded him, and Prue was making herself ready to receive him with triumph in her eyes, and without a shadow of doubt or regret to confirm her mother's fears. But she was so young; did she really know what she wanted? Mrs. Grey could not answer her own question. It lurked behind the eyes smiling at Prue in the glass as the girl made herself ready to receive her coming fate. She turned to meet the eyes with a little laugh of satisfaction, pardonable to the possessor of such beauty as she had just been contemplating.
"I think we weren't half sympathetic enough with Lydia in having a young man come out from New York to see her—it's really very nice, Mardy," she cried, shaking out of its box a single pink rose from among the many long-stemmed beauties filling the room with their odour. "I suppose you and Rob, and Wythie, if she were here, would rather have one of those old-time blush roses from the bush some one planted ages ago," Prue continued, "but I wouldn't; I'd rather have this magnificent thing that came from a hot-house after ever so long cultivating and selecting to make it what it is."
"Only that you may be good and happy, Prudy; that granted, your mother will not quarrel with you for loving the splendours of a world that never for a moment has appealed to her," said Mrs. Grey gently.
"Kiss me then, you dear, sweet mother," said Prue. "It's a pity I'm not like you, but I am a worldly Prudence—oh, I never thought of it before! Why did you name me Prudence if you did not want me to love this world's goods prudently?"
"It has always seemed to me imprudent to love them, Prue. But here's your kiss, my baby, and all good attend you, darling."
The faint blush tint of her floating gown, deepening into the pink of the rose he had sent her seemed to Arthur Stanhope, as Prue glided into the room, like the dawn, for he saw that she had come to fulfil his dreams.
It was moonlight, and Rob, sitting chin in hand by the window which Wythie had loved best in the room that had been theirs, saw her younger sister walking in its rays, and knew that she alone was now wholly the daughter of the little grey house.