As they drove up to the house, they saw Mrs. Bryce come out on the terrace, where the butler was arranging the tea-table and chairs. She wore a soft pink gown, and a broad, rose-laden hat. She looked very young and lovely. She sauntered to meet them with her slightly disdainful smile.
Wally turned to present Miss Barnes, but Isabelle was before him.
"Max, this is Ann Barnes," she explained.
"What did you do in town?" she inquired of the child.
"I hope you don't confuse them," laughed her mother.
"I don't envy you your job," she added, over her shoulder to Miss Barnes.
"What room is Miss Barnes to have, Max?" Wally called.
"You'll have to attend to that," she replied, with a sort of arrogant disregard of Wally's protégée.
"I'll show you, Ann," said Isabelle, adding: "nasty old Max!"
"Isabelle! your own mother!" protested Miss Barnes.
The child took her by the hand and led her into the house, with a dignity which would have been admirable, had it not been so pathetic. Miss Barnes felt that she was stepping off terra firma, and lighting on Mars, so strange and muddled was this new world she had entered upon.
It was a strange throw of Chance that tossed Ann Barnes into the heart of the Bryce family--or rather into its midst, for it seemed to Ann that there wasn't any heart to the family. The first weeks she spent at The Beeches were positively bewildering.
She was the eldest daughter of a small-town lawyer, in Vermont. There were five younger children, and after Ann's graduation at the State University, she set forth to make fame and fortune, with the ultimate object of rescuing her father and mother from the financial anxieties which had always beset them.
She was just an average healthy, fine American girl brought up in a normal, small-town American family. As the eldest, she had been her mother's assistant. She had served her apprenticeship in cooking, nursing babies, patching small clothes, turning old things around and upside down, in order to make them over. She could market wisely, she could "manage" on little.
So much for her practical training. She knew all the inconveniences and anxieties of an insufficient and variable income. But she also knew the unselfishness, the affectionate give-and-take of a big family. She knew what miracles the loving patience of her mother daily performed. She knew the selflessness of her father, which kept him at the treadmill of his profession that his children might have an education, might have their chance. Hospitality, kindness, love; these were of the very fibre of Ann's being.