"You can do without the fringe, young lady," says Armstrong, who has the old-fashioned male distaste for the modern style of hairdressing, pushing back two or three lank locks from her forehead.
"No, no; I must have a fringe, a regular Skye-terrier one too; my face looks so bald and hard without it. It's all that horrible cod-liver oil that's coming out in my hair and making it so thin and straight! I won't take any more of it, Tom; it's of no use trying to force me," she adds, with a low soft laugh that comes to him like a strain of sweetest music. "I'm going to get well without it--you'll see."
Later on that evening she startles him by alluding for the first time to her sisters and brothers, quite casually too, as if the thought of them had just struck her incidentally. She has been looking over an old photographic album, and, stopping before one of her sisters--Pauline--she says lightly--
"The others, Tom? They are doing well, aren't they--dear old Jo and Polly and Bob and Hal and Lottchen?"
"Yes, yes, love," he answers eagerly. "They are all doing well, every one of them."
"I should like to see them again," she says, after a pause--"to see them all together sitting here around me as in the old days. Will you ask them to come, Tom?"
"Yes, if you think you feel quite--quite rested enough, dear, after your journey," he answers reluctantly.
So they all come in haste and trembling, Lady Saunderson giving up two important appointments with Worth, traveling up from London with her elder brother, who seems paralyzed by the news that he had heard so unexpectedly.
Armstrong interviews them first, and in a few stern impressive words gives them the outline of their sister's story, and warns them against exciting her with ill-timed emotion in her critical state.
So with smiling faces and cheerful words they welcome her back as if she has been on a pleasant trip. There are no passionate tears, no hysterical kisses, no entreaties for forgiveness, no remorseful appeals. The meeting which Armstrong has been dreading opens and closes in sunshine, and Addie, propped up with cushions, greets them with glistening unresentful glance and gentle loving words.
"How well they look! Don't they, Tom?" she cries, turning a beaming face to her husband, against whose shoulder she is resting. "And, take them all in all, what a good-looking family they are to be sure! Why, Lottie, what an immense girl you have grown! And you've got all the doubtful bloom of my teens, roses, flesh, and freckles--all. I don't suppose it would become me to call you pretty, would it? Polly, what a swell you are--just like pictures from _Le Follet_. But your face hasn't changed much. Bob, I won't believe that mustache is genuine until I pull it. Come over here, sir, and face the light at once! What! You are afraid? I thought so," she adds with a gay laugh, as the boy turns away swiftly to hide the burning tears he can not keep from his eyes.