[CHAPTER SEVENTEEN]
ITS ADAMANTINE DAUGHTER
"'It's we two, it's we two, it's we two for aye,'" sang Rob to a slight, inconsequent tune of her own making. "We are the only Grey girls left, Mardy, the only reliable daughters of the little grey house. What with Wythie so very young-matronly and preoccupied in her home, and Prue shining at Newport and writing us of the cotillions and general splendours, and of admiration enough to turn any head, I begin to feel like Holmes' Last Leaf."
"Why, that's a rather dismal ending to a speech that began in such a contented little chant," said Mrs. Grey, looking up from her desk with her pen marking the point half-way up her column of accounts at which she had suspended addition.
"Oh, no; it's not a withered, dun leaf; it's a flaming maple," returned Rob. "But it is queer to be the spinster Miss Grey, with one's sisters married and gone—gone at any rate, and as good as married. The house is quiet, and—and—well, spacious."
"Lonely, Rob?" suggested her mother.
"No, Mardy; not lonely with you, but I feel, as near as I can express it—shrunken," said Rob thoughtfully. "I miss the girls, of course, but there is something sweet about this solitude of two, as the French say—like being an only child."
Mrs. Grey looked at Rob consideringly, wondering how long she could keep this daughter, if not the one dearest to her motherly heart, certainly the one that she could least well spare. The girl's face was not less brilliant, but it was quieter; the quick tongue had learned the curb, and there was a softer, more womanly look around the sensitive lips which always seemed ready to laugh or to quiver because the upper one was so short. "Wythie is as pretty and sweet as a dove, and Prue is rarely beautiful, but to my eyes Rob is the prettiest of the Grey girls, the one whose face has most power to charm," thought the mother for the unnumbered time as she looked at her. She dared not allude to Bruce. She believed and hoped that sooner or later Bruce's quiet persistence and devotion would win from Rob its reward, but the girl sprang to arms so quickly at a hint of such a possibility that her mother dared not suggest now that Rob, too, might slip away from the little grey house.
Instead, she asked: "Aren't you going up to see Wythie a moment before you go down to Charlotte's?"