"Dear, how can I tell? It isn't the same for us all. For one woman it is love; for another it is work; for some it is, blessedly, both work and love. For me—now—it is you! How can I tell what it will be for my little girl?"
"I want it!" whispered Sheila. "I want it!"
"You must wait for it, dear. You must wait for it to come to you. You can't hurry life."
"But can't I do anything?"
"You can be good, and you can be beautiful, so that you'll be ready for it when it comes. But"—and now Mrs. Caldwell smiled, and with her smile the stress of the moment passed—"but not in Charlotte's frock! It wouldn't be fair to make yourself beautiful with borrowed plumage, would it, little bird of paradise? You'd only get a borrowed happiness out of that—one that you hadn't a right to, and couldn't keep."
Sheila rose from her knees, smiling, too. "I'll go right upstairs and take it off," she declared. "I want to play fair from the start—I only want what's really mine!"
And so, coming back, under Mrs. Caldwell's tactful guidance, from the deep waters to the pleasant, shallow wavelets that lap the shores of commonplace life, she began to busy herself with the small duties of the night, closing the windows and putting out the lamps. Then, with bed-time candles after the fashion of Mrs. Caldwell's own girlhood, the two started up the stairs, Sheila leading and lighting the way—as youth always will, despite the riper wisdom of age. Once she smiled over her shoulder; and before they had gained the top of the flight, she paused and reached back her hand to help her grandmother up the last few steps. There was something gracious and strong in the gesture—something that had not been in the nature of the Sheila who had bent her head to Mrs. Caldwell's knee an hour before. It was as if the womanhood of which Mrs. Caldwell had spoken had already awakened in her and with it, not only the longing for something of her own, but that kindred tenderness for things little and helpless—or helpless and old.
"Take my hand," she said sweetly, and there was in her voice the lovely gentleness that young mothers use toward their children.
The next day, when Charlotte came to inquire why her guest had flown, without warning and apparently without cause, she found a Sheila who, though garbed once more in her own short frock, seemed in some mysterious way more grown-up than she had in the trailing splendor of the night before.
"What's happened to you?" demanded Charlotte shrewdly, when the two girls were shut into the privacy of Sheila's little white bedroom, a room that resembled the despised white muslin and blue sash which had been discarded for Charlotte's furbelows. "I know something's happened to you. You're—different. Did somebody make love to you?"