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 don’t think I don’t appreciate the lovely dress, and everything—oh—”



“My dear,’ said Molly’s mother, “haven’t I been telling you how I felt just so, before you—how I thought I must do something? Ah, Dear—I was thinking before you came in! I was afraid you were going to be like your Aunt Rachel,—the eldest Princess, you know, who went to the other side of the house. She—wants you to go to her for the London season. She wants to find a title for you—and would probably succeed.”

Molly and her mother laughed together with the disdain of the wise for a thing too foolish for serious discussion.

“And then when you came in, so wild with sudden pity for the things you had seen, I remembered poor Aunt Jenny at her prayers, and I hardly knew which would hurt me most, to see you in a coronet or a veil. But—oh, my dear—the woman’s way—the old, old woman’s way—it isn’t easy! Many, many days the burden of my life has been greater than it seemed I could bear. Do you realize that you were sick a good deal when you were a baby? To have one’s own little, little baby suffering and growing weaker—to be alone with your sick baby, and not be able to let your husband know, because he was saving somebody’s life by a hair’s breadth— You don’t think my life is easier than—district nursing, for example, do you?”

“Mother,” said Molly in a small voice, “may I put it on?”

While her mother with a glowing face was hooking it up the back, Molly held the violets to her nose and read the scrawled verse a great many times:

If a star could be a violet too—

“What perfect nonsense!” said she; but that did not seem to be exactly what she meant.