Suddenly the tears came rushing to her eyes, glad tears mingled with smiles, and she felt enveloped in the love of her children. Her boy and her girl! Think of it! She would have a daughter! And she was a part of them; she was to be in the close home part of the ceremony, the beforehand and the sweet excitement. They were waiting for her and wanting her, and she was not just a necessary part of it all because she was the groom’s mother; she was to stay his mother, and be mother to the girl; and she would perhaps be a sister to the girl’s mother, who was now also to be her boy’s mother. Now for the first time the bitterness was taken out of that thought about Arthur’s having another mother, and she was able to see how they two mothers could love him together, if the other one should prove to be the right kind of mother. And it now began to seem as if she must be to have brought up a girl like Cornelia. At that very moment in the little house on the hill four chattering college-girl bridesmaids attired in four becoming silk negligees were bunched together on Cornelia’s bed, supposed to be resting before they dressed, while Cornelia, happy-eyed and calm, sat among them for a few minutes’ reunion. “Isn’t it awfully queer that you should be the first of the bunch to get married?” burst forth Natalie, the most engaged and engaging of the group. “I thought I was to be the very first myself right after I graduated, and here we’ve had to put it off three times because Tom lost his position. And Pearl broke her engagement, and Ruth’s gone into business, and Jane is up to her eyes in music. It seems queer to have things so different from what we planned, doesn’t it? My, how we pitied you, Cornie, that day you had to leave. It seems an awful shame you had to go home then, when such a little time would have given you all that fun to remember. I don’t see why such things have to happen anyway. I think it was just horrid you never graduated. I don’t see why somebody couldn’t have come in here and taken care of things till you got through. It meant so very much to you. You missed so much, you know, that you can never, never make up.” Cornelia from her improvised couch by the window smiled dreamily. “Yes, but that was the day I met my new mother,” she said, almost as if she had forgotten their existence and were speaking to herself; “and she introduced me to Arthur. Probably I would never have seen either of them if I hadn’t come home just that day. A galaxy of eyes turned upon her, searching for romance, and studied her sweet face greedily.