Part 20

"She won't allow anyone to speak of her as an old maid. She says she's a spinster."

"What's the difference?"

"I think," returned Rosemary, pensively, "that an old maid is a woman who never could have married and a spinster is merely one who hasn't."

"Is it a question of opportunity?"

"I believe so."

"Then you're wrong, because some of the worst old maids I've ever known have been married women. I've seen men, too, who deserve the title."

"Poor Aunt Matilda," Rosemary sighed; "I'm sorry for her."

"Why?"

"Because she hasn't anyone to love her--because she hasn't you. I'm sorry for every other woman in the world," she concluded, generously, "because I have you all to myself."

"Sweet," he answered, possessing himself of her hand, "don't forget that you must divide me with mother."

"I won't. Will she care, do you think, because--" Her voice trailed off into an indistinct murmur.

"Of course not. She's glad. I told her this morning."

"Oh!" cried Rosemary, suddenly tremulous and afraid. "What did she say?"

"She was surprised at first." Alden carefully refrained from saying how much his mother had been surprised and how long it had been before she found herself equal to the occasion.

"Yes--and then?"

"Then she said she was glad; that she wanted me to be happy. She told me that she had always liked you and that the house wouldn't be so lonely after you came to live with us. Then she asked me to bring you to see her, as soon as you were ready to come."

The full tide overflowed in the girl's heart. She yearned toward Mrs. Marsh with worship, adoration, love. The mother-hunger made her faint with longing for a woman's arms around her, for a woman's tears of joy to mingle with her own.

"Take me to her," Rosemary pleaded. "Take me now!"

Madame saw them coming and went to the door to meet them. Rosemary was not at all what she had fancied in the way of a daughter-in-law, but, wisely, she determined to make the best of Alden's choice. Something in her stirred in answer to the infinite appeal in the girl's eyes. At the crowning moment of her life, Rosemary stood alone, fatherless, motherless, friendless, with only brown alpaca to take the place of all the pretty things that seem girlhood's right.

Madame smiled, then opened her arms. Without a word, Rosemary went to her, laid her head upon the sweet, silken softness of the old lady's shoulder, and began to cry softly.

"Daughter," whispered Madame, holding her close. "My dear daughter! Please don't!"

Rosemary laughed through her tears, then wiped her eyes. "It's only an April rain," she said. "I'm crying because I'm so happy."

"I wish," responded Madame, gently, with a glance at her son, "that I might be sure all the tears either of you are ever to shed would be tears of joy. It's the bitterness that hurts."

"Don't be pessimistic, Mother," said Alden, with a little break in his voice. Rosemary's tears woke all his tenderness. He longed to shield and shelter her; to stand, if he might, between her and the thousand pricks and stabs of the world.

"We'll have tea," Madame went on, brightly, ringing a silver bell as she spoke. "Then we shan't be quite so serious."

"Woman's inevitable solace," Alden observed, lounging about the room with his hands in his pockets. Man-like, he welcomed the change of mood.

"I wonder," he continued, with forced cheerfulness, "why people always cry at weddings and engagements and such things? A husband or wife is the only relative we are permitted to choose--we even have very little to say when it comes to a mother-in-law. With parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and cousins all provided by a generous but sometimes indiscriminating Fate, it seems hard that one's only choice should be made unpleasant by salt water.

"Why," he went on, warming to his subject, "I remember how a certain woman angled industriously for months to capture an unsuspecting young man for her daughter. When she finally landed him, and the ceremony came off to the usual accompaniment of Mendelssohn and a crowded church, I feared that the bridal couple might have to come down the aisle from the altar in a canoe, on account of the maternal tears."