"Well, you had better come along, Nesta," said Molly. "Mother will be awfully annoyed at Ethel being out. What a pity she went. It's very important for our future." The two sisters went up together to their mother's room, arm in arm. As a rule they often quarrelled, but on this occasion they were unanimous against their common fate. Mrs Aldworth, however, had changed her mood during Molly's absence. She had begun to think what all this was about, and what all the agony of Molly's tears really represented. The great trial in the minds of her daughters, was having to nurse her. She was their mother. "Am I such a nuisance, so terribly in every one's way?" she thought, and she began to sob feebly. She wished herself, as she was fond of saying, out of the way. "If only I might die!" she moaned. "They would be very sorry then. They would think a great deal of what their poor mother was to them in life. But they're all selfish, every one of them." It was in this changed mood that the two girls, Molly and Nesta, entered Mrs Aldworth's room. She greeted them when they appeared in the doorway. "Don't walk arm in arm in that ridiculous fashion. You know you are always quarrelling, you two. You are just in league against poor Marcia." "Poor Marcia!" cried Molly. "Yes, poor Marcia. But where's Ethel; why doesn't she come when her mother sends for her? Am I indeed openly defied in my own house?" "Oh, mother," said Molly, in some trepidation, "it isn't us, it is Marcia." "It's much more you, you are my children--Marcia isn't. I am your mother. Live as long as you may you will never be able to get a second mother." Here Mrs Aldworth burst into sobs herself. But Nesta was an adept at knowing how to manage the invalid when such scenes came on. "As though we wanted to," she said. "Darling little mother; sweet, pretty little mother." She knelt by the sofa, she put her soft arms round her mother's poor tired neck, she laid her soft, cool cheek against the hot one, she looked with her blue eyes into the eyes from which tears were streaming. "You know, mother, that we just worship you." "But, of course, mother, it's only natural," said Molly, "that we should _sometimes_ want to have a little fresh air." "It is just as true," continued Nesta, "that one cannot be young twice, as that one cannot have a real ownest mother over again." "Of course it is," said Mrs Aldworth, whose emotions were like the weathercock, and changed instant by instant. "I quite sympathise with you, my darlings. You adore me, don't you?" "We live for you," said Molly. "You are our first thought morning, noon, and night." "Then where is Ethel? Why doesn't she come?" "She has gone to the Carters to explain that we cannot possibly be present at the dance this evening." "Poor darling," said Nesta, "she'll have sunstroke on the way, her head was so bad."