't seem so silly, either. I believe I'll have that
crimson velvet yet," she concluded, with a laughing toss of the head.
Her mother looked from the bright materials to the bright face above
them.

"She would never have gone and bought all these colors just after the
doctor said I wasn't going to get well," she thought, and turned over
and fell into a real sleep. The last had been feigned--to escape
Jane's disquieting remarks and to ponder their significance.

II

Mary Ann's prophecy was fulfilled. Her mother stood beside her at the
garden gate when Jane and Selina drove away, her glances up and down
the sunny street evincing all a convalescent's freshened interest in
the outside world. The two faces were alike and yet unlike. The joy of
living was in both; but a little uncertainty, a little appeal in the
older woman's told that with her it depended to some degree upon the
steadier flow of animal spirits in the younger.

Jane and Selina turned for a last look at the portly figures and
waving handkerchiefs.

"Who would think to look at them," said Jane, "that Ma had only just
returned from the jaws of death! It ought to be a warning to them.
Some day she'll go off in one of those attacks."

"Ma'n'Mary Ann are as like as two peas," said Selina. "They're
Maberlys. There never was a Maberly yet that knew how to look ahead. I
declare, it gave me the shivers to see these two plunging right out of
a sick-bed into colors and fashions the way they did. Ma'd ought to
listen to us and sell her house and live round with her married
children; at her age she'd ought to be some place where sickness and
death are treated in a serious way."

Upon this point Mrs. Colquhoun was firm. She could never go back to
life on a farm again, she said; "living in town was _living_." But she
compromised by agreeing to devote the whole of the next summer to
visiting her married children.

That was a long summer to Mary Ann. There was something wanting in all
the small accustomed pleasures of her simple life, until the middle of
August came, and the time set for her mother's return was within
counting distance. Then her spirits rose higher with every hour. As a
toper would celebrate his happiness at the saloon, she went to Mr.
Merrill's dry-goods shop, and after a revel in that part of it where
color most ran riot, she bought new chintz covering for the parlor
furniture, a chrysanthemum pattern in various shades of fawn and
glowing crimson.