"Because you're such a queer little mother sitting there, with your owlish spectacles and your devotional books." Mrs. Douglas sighed, and then she smiled. "Poor Marget with her 'bonnie' dream! I was sitting thinking just now how well off I am having her to go back with me to the old days. As she says, it is heartless work living now, and yet there is something very heartening about the continuity of life. When I stay with Mark and Charlotte and see Mark rushing, the moment he gets home, to his garden, and watch him among the flowers, one hand behind his back in his father's very attitude, it might be my Mark with me again. And Rory, who came into the world the day his grandfather went out of it--one Mark Douglas going and another Mark Douglas taking his place--Rory sidles up to me and puts his head on my shoulder when he wants something, just as his father did thirty years ago--I think they should stop calling him Rory now and call him Mark." "Well, it's a little confusing for Charlotte to have two Marks in the house unless she does as Marget suggests, and 'ca's Mr. Mark Papaw.' But I know what you mean about the feeling of continuity. Last summer Alis and Rory, greatly condescending, were allowing young Robbie to play some game with them. I came upon them suddenly, and the years seemed to roll back when I saw the earnest absorbed face of Robbie as he padded about--it might have been my own Robbie. He, too, played with his whole might.... Oh, look at the fire going out rapidly." Ann knelt down and mended the fire with great care, sweeping in the ashes and making the hearth clean and tidy. "I spent my life tidying up this fireside. I might as well be a vestal virgin in a temple. There, that will be a fine fire when we come back. Have you finished your reading, Mother? We must go and change. It's a good thing the Moncrieffs are coming to-morrow. You and I have been living so much in the past that we are like two little grey ghosts." "I've enjoyed it," said Mrs. Douglas. "But think a long time before you decide to print what you've written." She gathered up her devotional books and built them in a neat pile on a table. "I wonder who you think could possibly be interested in such an uneventful record? All about nothing, and not even an end----" "I _wonder_," said Ann. THE END End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ann and her Mother, by O. Douglas