"And that alters it? Yes, a little. But I want it to be just as little as possible, my Wythie," returned her mother. "We won't talk about it to any one outside the little grey house, and you and Basil will be just the same friendly, simple comrades you have always been. You are so young, dear, and Basil is still in college. But we understand, as we have understood all along, that by and by your friendship is to broaden and deepen into much more."
"It can't, Mardy," said Wythie.
"Ah, Oswyth, everything broadens and deepens with time. Youth feels tempestuously, but years bring profounder depths. You are too much a child to know the truth of what I say to you. Be a young girl still, my Wythie, and be happy. Basil is all we could wish him to be," said Mrs. Grey, speaking out of the knowledge of her years of sacrificial love and her widowhood.
"Then you are willing, you don't mind, Mardy?" murmured Wythie.
"I am very glad, dearest, and I believe my gentle girl is going to be a happy woman. I mind nothing now but that she should miss sleep and take cold. Go to bed, little daughter, and go to sleep. Waking or sleeping my very breathing prays for you and Robin and little Prudy."
Mrs. Grey kissed Wythie hastily and half pushed her from her. Wythie clung to her as she returned the kiss, but went instantly away with her tear-wet face smiling. It was the mother, left standing beside the hearth, whose tears fell without the smiles. At last she stirred, sighed, stooped to pick up the fallen hearth brush, and stroked Kiku-san with the other hand.
"Of course I am glad, glad and thankful," she said, with only the white cat to hear. "But joy seems brief when one is a widow at forty-three, and mothers are selfish creatures." And this most unselfish mother brushed the ashes over the dying embers of the fire, looked at each window fastening, slowly put out her reading-lamp, and crept up-stairs like one that craved for rest.
Twelfth Night was not long in coming; it was to bring such a great event that it even successfully hurried the holidays out of the way.