“Poor real Mary Garden!” sighed Mary, pityingly, as she arose to go. “She has to be used so much to tease me!”
“The party’s all arranged, is it?” asked Win, also rising.
“No, indeed; it’s only arranged to be arranged!” cried Mary, looking around the grave room with the affection she always gave it.
It was a high-ceiled room, with arched door-ways, white wainscoting, an ample unadorned fireplace; soft green, patternless paper on the walls making an effective background for excellent pictures, and its furniture was plain and solid, square in outlines, upholstered in dark brocade.
“This room always looks to me as if it had never let anything that was not good come into it, at least not to stay in it,” she said.
“That is true,” Mrs. Moulton confirmed her, adding with a look of profound admiration at her husband: “Mr. Moulton’s father built this house and they say Austin is his father over again.”
“I’ll walk with them, if you are not going to close the house for a while, Mrs. Moulton,” said Mark, offering Mary the little scarf which had slipped from her arm to the floor. There was a look in his eyes, as his hand lightly brushed Mary’s shoulder, laying the scarf over it, that sent the colour flushing to Mrs. Moulton’s brow, it so surprised her.
“I’m sure I don’t know what I should say to that!” she exclaimed. Then, as Mark looked at her in blank amazement, she recalled herself. “Of course, walk over with them, Mark; we are not going to bed for an hour or so,” she added.
“They’re awfully good to me, Mary and Win,” said Mark, as they went along the street made silent by Vineclad’s early bedtime habits. “Mr. Moulton is trusting me more and more with important bits of his work, and they both are treating me as if they considered me something besides a snip of a boy whom they were paying. I’m having a fine time with them and the botanical work I wanted to do but never expected to be able to touch.”
“Gets better every day, doesn’t it?” cried Mary, raising her face to his, glowing with pure joy over this fortunate state of things.
“Every day lovelier than the last!” declared Mark, looking into Mary’s unclouded, unsuspicious eyes. And Win silently received the impression which, a little earlier, had startled Mrs. Moulton, but of which Mary was as unconscious as a crystal is of the rainbow colours playing through it.