“Oh, dear Mrs Percy,” she exclaimed, “please don’t think I was in earnest. It would have been very unkind and—impertinent. Do you know we often say Connie is the most active of us all, and it’s all the more credit to her, for she doesn’t need to be, like us. You couldn’t fancy one of us ever able to sit with our hands before us doing nothing—up at the Yew Trees. Now could you?”
And she broke into a merry sweet little laugh, for, indeed, the idea of any one at the Yew Trees indulging in much dolce far niente, was rather comical. They had only two servants, and the odd man, for all there was to do, and yet everything was nice and comfortably done, and there was never any “fussing,” which is so disagreeable.
The laugh made Mary’s peace.
“It is all right, my dear,” said mamma, kindly. “I daresay I take up things mistakenly sometimes,” she added. “You must forgive me; I fear I lost some of my capacity for fun long ago.”
She spoke in the rather touching way she sometimes, but rarely, did, when one could see she was thinking of that sad long ago time. Yvonne and Mary glanced at each other, and then at her half wistfully. They knew the story, of course, and even if mamma had been cross and disagreeable, I don’t believe they would ever have found it in their hearts to blame her. Still, there was no doubt mamma had never taken to Mary in the same way as to Evey. It was partly, I think, because of the name, “Evey” I mean, which mamma loved so; and partly—now I hope it is not wrong or disrespectful of me to say this—that Mary was like me, only much prettier, and I am afraid poor little darling mamma was a tiny atom jealous for me.
However, it was all smoothed down now about Mary’s little speech, and the boys’ talk soon took away any feeling of constraint.
“The worst of a birthday so near Christmas,” said Charley, thoughtfully, “is that it muddles the presents. Either you feel as if you’d got too much, or else people give you less than if Christmas wasn’t coming, and that isn’t fair.”
“It doesn’t matter so much now we’ve made a new rule,” said Addie. “We all give birthday presents to each other, but at Christmas we only give them to father and mother, and they give to us. It’s a good plan.”
“Yes,” said Mary, “there are so many of us, you see, that the lots of Christmas presents were really dreadful.”