Part 14 (1/2)
”Your affec bro,
”dick”
Mollie read this letter as she ate heroatcake So her spell had worked! The question ould it work again? For obviously she could not continue sending away photographs without causing remarks to be made and questions asked She did not see how she could do anything more herself; they ain
It was rather odd, when she came to think of it, that she had not questioned dick yesterday about how they had got over But the fact was that, after the first surprise of seeing theet about Now and only remember Then,” she said to herself ”There is so much to do the time simply flies and comes to an end far too soon”
When she arrived downstairs thatshe found that her sofa had been carried out of doors It was a lovely day Here in the country the leaves still retained their early freshness, and froainst the pale arden, with its solas and arches, its standards and dwarfs, was co into blooht she ht almost see a bud swell into a full-blown rose if she watched steadily enough Caroline Testout had already dropped some of her pink blossoms, which lay scattered about the path in rosy patches, re Mollie of Grizzel and her shells She shed, as her eyes wandered fro red brick wall beyond, where the sweet cherries grew The fruit was turning scarlet under an orderly net, which had been put up to protect it froht No one would dare to pull off those rose petals for scent- ather those cherriesjam with Chauncery was lovely and spacious coardens were a pleasure to look at, but----
”I don't think England is big enough to hold children,” she said to Aunt Mary, who sat near, reading the _Aeroplane_, with so in her lap
Aunt Mary looked up with a surprised expression: ”I a so crowded up,” she said ”Would you like me to move a little farther away?”
”No, thank you,” Mollie answered, with a laugh, ”I have room to breathe even with you there What Iher brow, and then went on: ”London isn't like this; it's full of poky holes Ours is bad enough, but from the train you can see much, much worse places than ours Sometimes I wonder how people can live in them, and yet Mother says they are not the worst There is simply no room for children to play, so they play on the streets and so to help, but it takes a long tihtfully--”and there is so little ti except work or Guiding I have no tio to sleep so horribly soon” She shook her head again and sighed deeply
”Well, that's one good thing to be thankful for,” Aunt Mary said cheerfully, dropping her paper and taking up her sewing, ”and there are the holidays for thinking in I wouldn't think too et plenty of that when you are old,” and Aunt Mary sighed too, as if she did not find her own thoughts very gay affairs always
”But I want to think of things now that will be useful long before I am old,” Mollie persisted ”There is such a _tres have to be thoughts long before they are things I expect the person who invented aeroplanes thought about thean to htest doubt of it,” Aunt Mary agreed, ”but you are wandering from your subject, which was the smallness of Great Britain”
”No, I'reater, and I can't think of a way I should like to have plenty of room and plenty of time”
”That won't be an easy problem for you to solve, my lambkin,” Aunt Mary said ”As a h, in the country, but people prefer to live in towns You will have to hire a pied piper and pipe all the babies into the fields”
Mollie shook her head, her eyes resting again upon the distant downs ”I don't know,” she said seriously, ”but so will have to be done soood, but they aren't enough Too oes to a children's home once a week, and she took me once You should just see those babies And they could be such dear little things too
Why--” Mollie hesitated for a o to live in Australia and Canada? The maps are full of empty spaces”
”Ah, Mollie my dear, that's not so easy as it sounds,” Aunt Mary said, folding up her work and rising to her feet ”There are all sorts of co camp from the Old World to the New But perhaps--perhaps if everyone in this old country could be persuaded to think of the children first--! In the et lunch for my particular child”
Probably Aunt Mary'son those sick babies of the poor as she played to Mollie that afternoon, for her fingers wandered off into the tune of a song she had not heard sung since her childhood:
”'T is the song, the sigh of the weary: Hard tiain no e door-- Oh, hard ti, the unopened albuarden, and thought she would rest her eyes by closing theood after all that sunshi+ne,” shein the quiet roo to Aunt Mary's softhu side of theand was now lass A delicious scent ca just outside the open
Mollie's lazy eyelids fell over her eyes--”Just five minutes--”
”Five minutes,” said the clock ”Ten minutes Fifteen minutes
Twenty--”
”How soundly the child sleeps,” Aunt Mary whispered, peeping in a little later to look at her niece ”These afternoon naps are the best thing in the world for her overworked little brain I wish I could fill Chauncery with children, and let thearden” She felt, not for the first time, how duty sees she would fain have done had her duty to her mother not stood in the way
Someone else came and looked at Mollie