Page:Hollyhock house; a story for girls (IA hollyhockhousest00tagg).pdf/288

266 “How lovely it all is after the rain! And after the fire!” said Mary, with a little laugh that caught in her throat. “I’m so glad to come back to you, dear old garden!”

“It is just as glad to get you back, daughter,” said Mr. Moulton, springing to forestall Win and Mark, and to help Mary into the lounging chair prepared for her. “The garden called us all together to tell you so, though it seems to me to need no spokesman.”

“It never needed one, though it adds to it! But how it speaks! I think it is fairly shouting, in reds and yellows and whites and purples: ‘The old Garden garden is glad to see you, Mary. It can’t quite spare one of its girls!’” said Mary, settling down with a sigh of utter content into her great chair and into the great love all things, animate and inanimate, around her bore her.