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88 nor Jane had spoken. “They are overwhelmed by seeing you. I told you what it meant to them to have you return to them from the dead—as they thought.”

“Naturally!” said Mrs. Garden, pressing the arm that happened to be nearest to her—Jane’s. “And fancy what it means to me to see you again, my dears! I should have written you, but your guardian and Anne Kennington forbade me. They thought it would make you quite too unhappy to be separated from me, knowing me alive. I dare say they were right. I positively could not have you with me, going about as I did. Oh, children, pity your little mother! Her voice is gone!”

“Indeed we are sorry, mother, darling,” said Mary, finding her own voice in response to the appeal in her mother’s. “But we can’t be as sorry as we would like to be because its going meant your coming—home.”

“That’s a nice little speech, Mary,” said her mother. “I’m glad you know how to say pretty things. It’s a great gift for a woman to say the right thing at the right moment.”

“Mary does not make pretty speeches, Mrs. Garden. She says the right thing because she feels the right way,” said Win, flushing.