“It’s going to be great,” she whispered to Doris.  “All the girls and the new games and the comings home for holidays and—­and everything.”

It was after they were alone that Nancy called down extra suffering upon herself.

“Aunt Dorrie will think you did not care, Joan, and Uncle David scowled.  You make people think queer things about you.”

Joan turned and fixed Nancy with flaming eyes.

“I want Aunt Dorrie to think everything is all right—­you didn’t!  You did not cheat her.  I did—­for her sake.”

“Perhaps,” Nancy sometimes struck a high note, unsuspectingly, “perhaps Aunt Dorrie would rather have you care.”

Joan regarded her intently and then replied: 

“Well, then, you’re all right, Nan!”

The tone, more than the words, stung Nancy.  It hurt her to have any one misunderstand, but it often occurred to her that it hurt more to be understood!

In the train en route to New York Doris sat very quiet, thinking of the two little faces she was leaving—­forever!  It amounted to that—­as every woman knows.

Nothing but their faces held as the miles were dashed past—­faces that portrayed the spiritual essence of the old, dear years—­faces that would turn, from now on, to others, and take on new expressions, bear the mark of another’s impress.

“Well, thank heaven,” Doris presently broke out, “I haven’t been a vamp mother, David.”

Martin came from behind his newspaper.

“And because of that, Doris,” he said, “you will have those girls coming back to you.  They will want to come.”  He was thinking of Nancy.

“Yes.  I have a sure feeling about that.”  Then:  “How splendid it was of Joan to act as she did!  She’d rather we thought her hard than to let us see her pain.”

Martin stared.  “You mean Nancy?” he asked.

“No.  Nan, bless her, cannot disguise herself, but Joan can!  Joan will suffer through her strength.”

The period, always a dangerous one, the year following school life, became Doris’s great concern while the school time progressed in orderly fashion under Miss Phillips’s guidance.

“I am keeping my hands off,” Doris often confided to Martin.  “It is only fair play while the children are at Dondale.  You were right—­Miss Phillips is a wonderful woman—­I have learned to trust her absolutely.  She has appreciated what I tried to do for the girls; is building on it; she will return them to me—­not different, but—­extended!  It’s the time after, David, that I am planning.  That time which is the link between restraint and the finding of one’s self.”

“I declare,” Martin would reply to this, “I wonder that you ever get results, Doris; you harvest while others are sowing.”

But deep in us all is the current carrying on and on, and it was hurrying Doris during the years while the girls were at Dondale.

There were the happy vacations, the new interests, the marvel of watching the miracle of evolution from the child to the woman.  At times this was breathlessly exciting.