It was marvellous what a change came over the pretty little house where Ted and Harold lived almost as soon as Aunt Lou, as they called Mrs. Harris, came to feel at home there. The servants were the same that had been with them at the time of their mother's death, and had been as faithful as they knew how to be, even when their patience had been well-nigh exhausted by “Mr. Theodores” unreasonable demands of the previous summer; and, indeed, unreasonable had been no word for it. There are boys and girls everywhere who know, to their sorrow, what it means to have the big brother come home from college. How he does lord it over the rest of us! And if he chances to bring a new chum along with him, whom he rather wants to impress, then heigh-ho! for a hard time for everybody. He pays little or no heed at all to the ordinary regulations of the household, and meals must wait for an hour, or be served in a jiffy, as best suits his humor or convenience. Of course there are some good fellows of whom this is not true at all, and even those of whom it is, as a rule, in time get over it; but meanwhile the mothers grow quite worn out sometimes, and the mischief fares on past mending. So much for our little protest against a tendency of college life. The bother of it is, it is not likely in the least to help matters. As for Ted, you can imagine the life he led those servants of his, with four college-men his guests for the summer, and no one to gainsay him. Early and late they were kept slaving away, with never a spark of consideration shown them, and nothing but the love they had borne their mistress and an occasional kind word from Harold, proving how he felt in the matter, had carried them through it. Still faithful as they had been, something had gone out of the house with its sweet little mistress, that had happily come in again with Aunt Lou, and Harold was quick to recognize it.
“Is it possible you've been here only a week?” he asked as they all sat together one evening in the library—that is, with the exception of Theodore, whose spring term still kept him at Oxford.
“Just a week to-day, Harold,” said Aunt Lou, looking up from a great mass of crocheting, that would soon be a full-grown afghan; “I hope it hasn't seemed more like a month to you, dear.”
“It has seemed as though mother was back—that's the way it has seemed, and it's been like a bit of heaven and if ever Mrs. Harris felt repaid for anything in her life, she felt repaid that moment for their journey across three thousand miles of water.
“I wonder what it is makes such a difference with a woman—that is, a lady—in the house?” Harold added. “I suppose you can't exactly understand it, but even the books, and things on that table there, have a different look since you came, Aunt Lou.”
Aunt Lou crocheted away for dear life, and looked very happy, and Uncle Fritz laid aside his book, and announced wisely, “I can tell you what makes the difference if you want to know, Harold; it's the countless little touches here and there. You notice now and then, and you'll see that Aunt Lou is forever changing the position of something, if it's only a chair as she passes or the lowering of a window-shade by the fraction of an inch. It's a sort of intuitive—”
“It's just mamma's own self, that's what it is,” interrupted Marie-Celeste, since her father seemed to be at a loss for a word, and she put her two arms around her mother's neck, as much as to say, “Isn't a mother like mine the darlingest thing?” and then a little fellow, who didn't have any mother, quite unconsciously to himself, drew a great deep sigh, and Mrs. Harris gave her little daughter a furtive push from her. Marie-Celeste looked puzzled a moment, and then she understood.
“Remember, my little girl,” Mrs. Harris had said to her more than once, “that there's nothing but sin itself has so many heavy hearts to answer for as thoughtlessness; and thoughtfulness, next to love, has lightened and brightened more hearts than anything else in the world and Marie-Celeste knew how thoughtless she had been to press home upon Harold in any way a keener sense of his own great loss. Resolved that it should never happen again, and annoyed at herself beside, Marie-Celeste moved away to the window on the other side of the room. There was somebody sitting at the window—somebody half asleep in a great arm-chair, and all but purring with contentment, and it was no one else than Donald, if you please. It had all come about so beautifully, that morning that Harold had come out to meet them on the tender, at Liverpool. It had taken nearly two hours to transfer the baggage after the steamer had come to anchor, and during that time Marie-Celeste had stolen away to have a last chat with Donald. He sat propped up in Mr. Belden's steamer-chair, whither two of the stewards had carried him, and lying out there in the open air, he seemed to look paler than ever.