“Dear Mrs. Keith, you are and always have been so very kind to us, though we never had the slightest claim upon you,” returned Ethel, grateful tears shining in her eyes; “but our visit here has already been longer than we expected to make it when we came. Besides I know so large a family must cost a great deal in both work and money.”
“Never you mind about all that,” laughed Mrs. Keith; “we don’t need to count the pennies, and must always expect to pay in more ways than one for the pleasures we have.”
“Oh, please believe that I—I did not mean to be impertinent,” stammered Ethel with a blush; “but I’ve had to count pennies almost ever since I can remember, and it has made me feel very reluctant to use up those of other people.”
“My dear girl,” said Mrs. Keith with a smile, “I’ll forgive the impertinence if you will promise to stay another week or two.”
It did not take much persuasion to win Ethel’s consent, for she dreaded going back to the home where Nannette was not, and that seemed so desolate without her sunny presence.
The ten days or more that followed seemed to the young people to fly very fast in each other’s pleasant society, and by the end of that time their acquaintance had progressed beyond what it might in years of more ordinary intercourse. Percy and Ethel, Stuart and Blanche, felt that they knew each other well, had become mutually attached, and there was a double betrothal and a looking forward to a double wedding when a year or so should establish the young men more fully in business, increasing their means, and bring to the girls a feeling that the mourning garments, now worn in memory of Nannette, might be willingly and with propriety laid aside.
The relatives of the young men, including Percy’s mother and sisters, were all pleased, for having for years heard a great deal of these young girls, through their New Jersey relatives, they felt that they already knew them well.
“Dear girl, I want you to feel that you are no longer motherless,” Mildred said, taking Ethel into a close, loving embrace when Percy had told his story, in the privacy of her own room, “for I shall be glad to claim you as one of my daughters, as I am sure Percy’s father will also; so that you must no longer feel yourself an orphan.”
“Thank you, dear Mrs. Landreth. It will be, oh, so sweet, to have a mother again,” returned Ethel in low, tremulous tones, “though I do not feel worthy of such an one as you.”
“Quite as worthy as I am of such a daughter as yourself, dear girl,” Mildred said with a smile and another caress; “one who has shown herself such a brave, capable, energetic little woman, preferring to earn her own living rather than to live idly dependent upon others.”