Page:Hollyhock house; a story for girls (IA hollyhockhousest00tagg).pdf/72

54 Florimel ran after Mary, and Anne Kennington turned to Jane.

“What put the stage into your head, Jane?” she asked. “Were you thinking of your mother? You don’t look like her, but you are more like her, in some ways, than either of the others.”

“My mother?” echoed Jane. “Mercy, no, Anne! Why should I?”

“Well, of course she did not go on the stage, yet singing is, in a way, like it,” said Anne. “You know your mother was a singer and she couldn’t keep away from the old life: singing, and applause, and all that, after she was a widow. You know she left you here to go back to it.”

“Yes, I knew all that,” said Jane slowly, “but I seem to have to try to know it; it isn’t real to me. I never can make my mother real to me, Anne. You knew her. I wish you could make me feel what she was like.”

“Knew her? I came over with her before she married and I stayed with her till she went back to England. She left me; never I her,” said Anne warmly. “Just a slender bit of a thing was she, like a primrose, one that you couldn’t help spoiling, such coaxing ways she had and such a pretty face, with a little droop of her shoulders and a fall in her voice as if she