It
was a cosy, home-like looking little house, approached by a wide flagged
path bordered with sweet, old-fashioned country flowers. One of its walls
was half concealed beneath a purple mist of wistaria, while on the other
side of the porch roses nodded their heads right up to the very eaves of
the roof. From the green-clothed porch itself clustered trumpets of
honeysuckle bloom poured forth their meltingly sweet perfume on the air.
And framed in the green and gold of the honeysuckle, her face wreathed in
smiles, stood the comfortable figure of Maria Coombe.
Ann was conscious of a sudden tightening about her throat. The sight of
Maria, with her shrewd, kindly eyes smiling above her plump pink cheeks,
and her hands thrust deep into the big, capacious pockets of her snowy
apron, just as she remembered her in the long-ago nursery days at Lovell,
brought back a flood of tender memories--of the old home in Devon which she
had loved so intensely, of Virginia, frail and sweet, filling the place of
that dead mother whom she had never known, of all that had gone to make up
the happy, care-free days of childhood.
"Maria!" With a cry Ann fled up the flagged path, and the nest moment
Maria's arms had enveloped her and she was coaxing and patting and hugging
her just as she had done through a hundred childish tragedies in years gone
by, with the soft, slurred Devon brogue making familiar music in Ann's
ears.
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