“What is it? You quite frightened me!” gasped Mrs. Garden, leaning against the casement of the door, her hand at her side, as she saw that the girls were at least not sorrowful.
“I knew it was only Jane or Florimel gone stark mad; it’s both of them,” said Anne, with the annoyance relief always seems to call forth. Florimel and Jane released each other and caught their mother into their embrace.
“Win’s going to let us go with him to get the car,” announced Florimel. “Mary says it’s all right----” Florimel stopped, hesitated, fell back, and looked at her mother doubtfully. “You don’t care if we go, do you?” she said slowly. “Somehow we never think of asking you things like that. We shall after we get you looking to us like our mother. You don’t care? If we go, I mean?”
“Of course not. And I’d rather you wouldn’t ask me things like that; it would be embarrassing to betray how little I knew about what was best for you,” said Mrs. Garden, half pettishly. “I should think it would be very pleasant for you to go--and an awful nuisance to Win to take you.”
“Why, madrina!” said Jane reproachfully. “When we’re such good company and Win has known us so long! The way we’ve worked for that boy and entertained him! He’s the nuisance. I’ve worked over him for years; I’m glad that he feels grateful enough to do a little for us!” Jane waltzed over to Win and took him by the ears and swung his head gently from side to side as she hummed and danced a slow waltz, in which he had no choice but to follow her, captured as he was.
The result of this sudden resolution on Win’s part to escort his almost-contemporaneous nieces to New York was that they set out on the second day in high glee, accompanied to the station by Mr. and Mrs. Moulton, Mrs. Garden, Mary, and Anne. Mark also was of the party and insisted upon carrying their suitcase.
“I do hope everything will go right,” said Mary, as the travellers’ escort walked slowly homeward through the Vineclad streets, pleasantly shady in the July heat.
“Oh, Win can’t go wrong, with the car picked out at home! If he engages an unsatisfactory man, we aren’t obliged to keep him,” said Mrs. Garden. “How frightfully warm it is! We never have such intemperate heat at home in England.”