Page:Hollyhock house; a story for girls (IA hollyhockhousest00tagg).pdf/343

Rh Mary turned toward the house, a hand on her mother’s shoulder, the other on Jane’s arm. Florimel, behind them, encircled her mother with her hands on her sisters’ shoulders.

“Now we are all going from our happy, put-to-bed garden into our happy, waking house! Come, boys, both!” Mary said.

“We’re so blessed that we can’t quite know how happy we are. Isn’t that beautiful? To know we’re happier than we can know we are?” said Jane.

“I wonder if we aren’t the very luckiest girls in the world?” said Florimel. “I wonder if we could call our garden fairies, and ask them who were the happiest girls in the world, what they’d say?”

And from the steps, where she stood in the setting sun, came Anne’s voice calling, like an answer:

“Garden girls! Garden girls!”