Page:Hollyhock house; a story for girls (IA hollyhockhousest00tagg).pdf/111

Rh must engrave suggest age. But in reality she was wonderfully young looking for her age, with a faded look of childhood upon her, as if she were a little girl that some one had veiled unsuitably, and who was overtired. It was easy to understand that she had attracted people to her all her life. The girls, watching her, began to feel her charm, and to throb with rapid heartbeats, feeling it.

“Now I really must go to my room, children,” she announced, rising at last. “I’m quite refreshed; the tea was excellent, my good Abbie. Where is Mr. Moulton? I never said a word to him when I got here! How rude of me! Yet how can one remember one’s manners, meeting her three big girls, whom she last saw babies?”

“Mr. Moulton found Mark coming after him, and went home with him,” Anne explained. “He bade me tell you, Mrs. Garden, that he begged to be excused from wearying you further to-night; that he hoped you would find yourself rested to-morrow, and that he and Mrs. Moulton would come to ask after you in the afternoon.”

“That’s very nice of him, Anne; he seems to be nicer than I remembered him. He bored me when I was a girl here, but the doctor adored him.