Doctor Hathern's daughters

by Mary Jane Holmes

“Why—why—why; bless my soul! What’s all this whirlwind for? and crying, too,” the Doctor said, folding them in his arms and feeling his own eyes moisten a little.

“We didn’t half tell you how glad we are to have you home, and we don’t mean to cry,” Fan said; “and we are not going to again; but just this little minute I can’t help it.”

“Yes, yes; there, there,” the doctor replied, patting first one head and then the other, “there’s nothing to cry about, I assure you, except for joy. She’s a very remarkable woman, and the wonder is that she could care for an old codger like me. We are going to be very happy, all of us. She has some elegant furniture coming, which will make the old house quite like a palace. You know you have wanted new furniture a long time.”

“Oh, father,” Fanny cried. “We would rather have you than all the fine furniture in the world; but we are going to be good; indeed we are.”

She was hugging him again with her arms around his neck on one side of him, while Annie’s were on the other, when they were startled with a call for Sam, which came echoing down the hall like the peal of a clarionet, making the four clinging arms drop suddenly, while the doctor struggled into an upright position and answered, “Yes, Matty, I am coming.”

Mrs. Hathern had removed her bonnet and investigated the room, deciding, with a radical woman’s quickness what changes she would make when her furniture came; deciding, too, that the windows had not been half washed and the window stools not at all, judging from the dust and dried leaves upon them. Then with her umbrella she demolished the big spider’s web and was proceeding to attack a smaller one in the vicinity of the bell rope, which she tried with no effect, when Katy came dancing into the room, her blue eyes showing the admiration she felt for her new mamma, whose grey dress and steel buttons she began to finger caressingly.

“I like you,” she said and moved by an impulse she could not resist Mrs. Hathern stooped and kissed the lovely face with something like a real mother feeling in her heart.

But nothing could change her nature, which was to discipline and mould whatever needed moulding and disciplining. So, when Katy, wishing to call attention to her gift of flowers, said to her, “Have you seen my flowers. I give ’em to you.” She answered promptly, “You mean you gave them to me. Little girls must learn to use good grammar. Yes, I see them; they are very pretty, but be careful or you will upset the vase and spill the water; better run out now, while I make my toilet.”

It was not so much the words as the tone with which they were spoken, which brought a slight shadow to Katy’s face as she started for the door, followed by Mrs. Hathern, who looked out into the hall in time to see the tableau at the farther end.

“Not as emotionless and impassive as I thought,” she said to herself, understanding it perfectly, and interrupting it with her call for Sam. She was given to the use of pet names; she had called her first husband Tom, and knew no reason why she should not call her second Sam. At first he rather liked it. He had been Sam when a boy, and it made him feel young again. But when he heard it in the presence of his daughters, it sounded differently, for he felt their disapproval of it.