"Because I couldn’t keep it from you, Milly. You see it doesn’t do any good for me to bother you except to relieve me a little."
"And isn’t that something?" with anxious affection. "Why, you make me as vain as a peacock. I didn’t know I counted a bit. I thought you had to have somebody old, like mother or Mr. Van Tassel, to get any comfort out of them."
"Now of course you feel as I do, Mildred," said the older sister, her quick self-control regained. "Nothing is any matter but to keep this from mother."
"Well, I don’t see how we’re going to do it for any length of time."
Clover bit her lip. "But as long as we can, we will."
"Of course. Why, poor mother would be crushed!" Then with a change of tone, "Here she comes this minute, Clover Bryant!"
"Better not come out here, mother dear," cried Mildred, rising precipitately and advancing to meet her. "The—the clothes are so damp, you’ll—you’ll take cold; and the sun is so hot, you’ll be—be"—
The mother, with her delicate face smiling beneath the prematurely white hair, placed her arm around the tall girl as she met her, and together they advanced, Mildred most reluctantly, to where Clover sat smiling and striving to look indifferent.
"Have you come out to hear the jays scold?" asked the latter. "There is one up there now. Let me hang the hammock for you." She sprang to her feet.
Mrs. Bryant, without relinquishing her hold on Mildred, put the other arm around her eldest daughter.
Clover flushed violently. There was a look in her mother’s loving eyes, the hint of a smile on her lips, which the girl recognized. It was a certain exalted expression of the dear lined face which her children had seen before, and it always meant rising to an emergency. The girl’s heart contracted painfully.
The wet clothing on the lines flapped spasmodically behind the trio. Unsteady board fences enclosed the narrow heated area. The poverty-stricken tree stretched its gaunt, ill-clothed arms aloft, and the blue-jay’s harsh, jeering note added one more petty discomfort to the surroundings.
"My dear little girls," said the gentle voice with unusual tenderness.
The sisters only regarded their mother in an apprehensive silence.
"I went to your room for something, Clover, and I found my letter from Uncle Adolph. I have just been reading it. Don’t regret it. I had to know."