“There!” cried Rose, laughing. “It’s a little too old for you.”
“Well, of all the stuff!” said Dick.
“I call it bully,” said Jack.
“And whom did she marry?” cried Ned. “Never any one?”
“Never! Like Rose Lyndsay. I am going to live with you all my life at home, and never, never marry.”
Upon this the twins intimated their satisfaction by pulling Ned’s back hair. He howled loudly.
“Seems to answer the bell,” said Jack.
“Oh, stop that—it hurts!”
“Look out there!” cried the sternman. “You’ll upset the birch. There are too many of you, anyways.”
Again Rose called them to order, and they were silent a while. In the mean time she sat gazing up the changing waterway. This home-coming, this abrupt transition, this privilege of abandonment to every light, innocent folly, even to enjoying the mad fun of three clever boys, made for her an immense change, and one which she felt to be both wholesome and pleasant. In Europe she had come fully to understand the sacrifice Anne had made in order to be with her, and at last to see but too clearly that Anne Lyndsay was failing. To none was this so clear as to the sufferer; to none less clear than to her brother. As to Margaret, she was by nature conservative. The word hardly describes what I mean. She had an inherent belief in the unchangeableness of things and people. The death of Harry had been the first calamity in a prosperous life. She had so long seen Anne Lyndsay to her mind full of levity that she found it impossible to accept the idea that for this woman, who lowered her crest to no adverse hour, the time could not be very far away when she would cease to smile at pain.