Page:Hollyhock house; a story for girls (IA hollyhockhousest00tagg).pdf/114

96 gems of the purest water. It all lay before her—the setting, and learning, and enjoying of this strange gift. In that brief time which she had spent with her mother on her arrival Mary had seen that nothing which they knew of ordinary mothers would help the Garden girls to acquaintance with their own, neither in teaching them their duty toward her nor in enjoying her. As she lay in thought, gradually Mary’s ecstasy in waking merged into a graver sense of responsibility that reversed the relationship of this new mother and her eldest daughter. Mary recalled her mother’s pretty mannerisms, spontaneous yet trained; her dainty appointments, her dependence, her appeal, as of one who had been accustomed to homage and must have it.

“She has come home because she is cruelly wounded; we must remember that every moment,” Mary thought, feeling her way. “She cared more for her singing, her career, than for anything else—yes, anything else!” Mary repeated this to herself sternly. “We can’t mean much to her yet; she doesn’t know us. She will miss her old life dreadfully. She will feel wretched when she remembers that she cannot sing now. We must keep her from thinking of