"I have often wished I could make myself in many ways more like those two great-hearted gentlemen!" she said.
Barbara remained sitting upon the floor. Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully as she stared out of the window.
"They are perfectly dear," she agreed, without reservation, "Isn't it splendid that they love us so, Aunt Hitty?"
"I'm going to the still-room now," said Mistress Mehitable, moving toward the door. "I put in the bergamot just before breakfast."
"I'll come and help you in a little while,—dear!" said Barbara, suddenly realising the changed relations, and suddenly making practical application of it. That caressing, equal, half-protecting "dear" sounded strange to Mistress Mehitable. It gave her something of a shock, yet she was not sure she didn't like it. It made her feel less alone than of old. She appeared not to notice it, however, merely saying before she vanished:
"If I'm not in the still-room, I'll be down the back garden, gathering herbs. The lemon-thyme's in flower, if you're going to distill any more of your 'Maryland Memories.' Uncle Robert might like a flask of it."
"Lovely," said Barbara, dreamily. "We will make him some. I'll hurry."
But for a few minutes she did not hurry at all. Her rich, rebellious hair all down about her vivid face, her thin little shapely feet peeping out from under the frills of her white nightgown, she sat in the square of sunshine and pondered. Since she fled away yesterday morning, what a change had come about! She felt as if that wild and foolish adventure was years behind her. A certain vague sense of responsibility oppressed her, a responsibility to herself hitherto unacknowledged. She made the momentous resolve that she would learn to know herself a little, as a step to enabling other people, Robert Gault and Aunt Hitty in particular, to understand her. She got up and scrutinised herself keenly in the glass.
"You didn't know you were getting so grown up, did you, you ugly, skinny, little black thing!" she muttered.
Then she flitted back to her own room, poured out a dish of milk for the hungry kittens, and snatched at her breakfast by mouthfuls, while she made her toilet and dressed. Last of all, before going to join Mistress Mehitable, she sat down on the edge of her bed, and took the kittens into her lap. One by one she held up their round, pinky-nosed faces, and gazed seriously into their enigmatic young eyes.