Aunt Hetty at the helm, the good old servant, whose black face had
beamed over my cradle fifteen years ago, and whose strong arms had come
between mother and every roughness during her twenty years of
housekeeping, it really looked as if I might be trusted, and as if
mother need not give me so many anxious directions. Did mother think me
a baby? I wondered resentfully. Father always reads my face like an open
page.

"Thee may leave something to Milly's discretion, dear," he said, in his
slow, stately way.

"Thee forgets her inexperience, love," said my gentle mother.

Father and mother are always courtly and tender with one another, never
hasty of speech, never impatient. They have been lovers, and then they
are gentlefolk. Father waited, and mother kept on telling me about
grandmamma and the cat, the birds and the best china, the fire on the
hearth in cool evenings, and the last year's canned fruit, which might
as well be used up while she was away, particularly the cherries and
plums.

"May the girls come over often?" I asked.

"Whenever you like," said mother. "Invite whom you please, of course."

Here father held up his watch warningly. It was time to go, if they
were to catch the train. Arm in arm they walked down the long avenue to
the gate, after bidding me good-bye. Grandmamma watched them, waving her
handkerchief from the window of her room over the porch, and at the last
moment I rushed after them for a final kiss and hug.