“Patricia had just dropped asleep,” she told them as she led the way up stairs.  Not that it was the proper time, but she was always doing unexpected things.  That very day she had surprised them with four new words which they had not dreamed she could say.  Eliot had orders to bring her in the moment that she awakened, so they could soon see the most remarkable child in the world.  Yes, Eliot was still with her, good old Eliot.  She intended to keep her always.  Not as a maid, however.  She had earned the position of guardian angel to Patricia by all her years of devoted service, and she played her part to perfection.

While the girls opened their suit-cases and changed their dresses to costumes more suitable for evening, Eugenia stood in the door between the two rooms, turning first one way and then the other to answer the questions rapidly propounded.  Mary, thankful that her white pongee had not wrinkled, divided her attention between the donning of that, and the information that Eugenia was imparting.

She had named the baby for Stuart’s great-aunt Patricia, who for so many years had been like a mother to the boys and Elsie.  She felt that she owed the dear, prim old lady that much as a sort of reparation for all she had suffered at the hands of the boys whom she had loved so dearly in spite of her inability to understand them.  Father Tremont had been so touched and pleased when she proposed it.  No, he could not be with them this Christmas.  He had taken Elsie to the south of France.  She was not very strong.  Yes, Phil approved of her choice of names, but he said just as soon as she was old enough he intended to buy her a monkey and name it Dago, so that there would be one Patricia who was not afraid of such a pet.[1]

FOOTNOTES: 

[1:  See “The Story of Dago” for an account of Phil’s and Stuart’s childhood.]

Mary, who had watched with keen interest the unwrapping of the dozens of beautiful wedding gifts at The Locusts, took a peculiar pleasure in looking around for them now, and recognizing them among the handsome furnishings of the different rooms.  Heretofore the Locusts had been her ideal of all that a home should be, but this far surpassed anything she had ever seen in luxurious fittings.

As the girls followed their hostess over the house, with admiring exclamations for each room, Mary thought with inward amusement of the cold shivers she had had, as she stood with the bridal party between the Rose-gate and the flower crowned altar, listening to the solemn vow:  “I, Eugenia,—­take thee, Stuart—­for better, for worse—­” There had been no worse.  It was all better, infinitely better, and the shivers had been entirely unnecessary.

Stuart came in presently, from a long round of professional visits.  The young doctor had nearly as large a practise as his father, and had been riding all afternoon.  Mary caught a glimpse of his meeting with Eugenia, in the hall, and when he came in, cordial as a boy in his welcome, and by numberless little courtesies showing himself the most considerate of hosts and husbands, she thought again, “This is one time it was certainly all ‘for better.’”