"Yes, wrong. I have never believed mother could be wrong in anything before, and when she wanted me to give up painting I did so because I thought she knew best. But I know she's not right about Madge, and if she is wrong about her, how do I know she was not wrong about my working with Mr. Crocker?"
Margaret's words that day in the bark slant were now ringing in his ears. He had never forgotten them--"Your mother cannot coddle you up forever."
Miss Clendenning held her peace. She was not astonished at the revolt in the boy's mind. She had seen for months past in his letters that Oliver's individuality was asserting itself. It was the new girl whom he was defending--the woman he loved. This had given him strength. She knew something of what he felt, and she knew what blind obedience had done for her. With a half-smothered sigh, she reached over Oliver's head, dipped a quill pen in her inkstand, and at Oliver's dictation, wrote Margaret's address.
"I will invite her at once," she said.
Long after Oliver had gone Miss Clendenning sat looking into the fire. The palaces of rose and amber that the busy fingers of the fire fairies had built up in the white heat of their enthusiasm were in ruins.
The light had gone out. Only gray ashes remained, with here and there a dead cinder.
Miss Clendenning rose from her chair, stood a moment in deep thought, and said, aloud:
"If she loves him, she shall have him. There shall be no more desolate firesides if I can help it."
Early the next morning, she mailed by the first post a letter so dainty in form and so delicate in color that only a turtle-dove should have carried it to Brookfleld Farm, and have dropped it into Margaret's hand. This billet-doux began by inviting Miss Margaret Grant of Brookfield Farm to pass a week with Miss Lavinia Clendenning, of Kennedy Square, she, Miss Lavinia, desiring to know the better one who had so charmed and delighted "our dear Oliver," and ended with "Please say to your good mother, that I am twice your age, and will take as much care of you as if you were my own daughter.
I feel assured she will waive all ceremony when she thinks of how warm a greeting awaits you."
Margaret looked at the post-mark, and then at the little oval of violet wax bearing the crest of the Clendennings--granted in the time of Queen Elizabeth for distinguished services to the Throne--and after she had read it to her mother, and had shown the seal to her father, who had put on his glasses, scanned it closely, and tossed it back to her with a dry laugh, and after she had talked it all over with John, who said it was certainly very kind of the woman, and that Oliver's people were evidently "nobs," but, of course, Madge couldn't go, not knowing any of them, Margaret took a sheet of plain white paper from her desk, thanked Miss Clendenning for her kind thought of her, and declined the honor in a firm, round hand.
This she closed with a red wafer, and then, with a little bridling of her head and a determined look in her face, she laid the letter on the gate-post, ready for the early stage in the morning.
This missive was duly received by Miss Clendenning, and read at once to Mrs. Horn, who raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips in deep thought.
After some moments she looked over her glasses at Miss Lavinia and said:
"I must say, Lavinia, I am very greatly astonished.
Won't come? She has done perfectly right. I think all the better of her for it. Really, there may be something in the girl after all. Let me look at her handwriting again--writes like a woman of some force. Won't come? What do you think, Lavinia?"
"Merely a question of grandmothers, my dear; she seems to have had one, too," answered the little old maid, with a quizzical smile in her eye, as she folded the letter and slipped it in her pocket.
