ne through the long still afternoons while
her mother slept. There were a hundred things she wanted to talk about,
so many questions she wanted to ask, so many little matters on which she
needed advice. There was not even the Moredock phonograph to listen to
now, for it had not been wound up since the beginning of Mrs. Downs'
illness, lest its playing disturb her. All she could do was to sit and
stitch as patiently as she could, till she heard the bedroom door open,
and then fly to make her mother a cup of tea and have a tempting little
supper ready for her when she should come out, dressed and ready to go
back to another exhausting vigil.

The few minutes while Mrs. Ware sat enjoying the dainty meal were the
best in the day for Mary, for she poured out her pent-up questions and
speeches, reported all that had gone on since the last time she sat
there, and crowded into that brief space as much of Jack's sayings and
Norman's doings as she could possibly remember.

"Oh, it'll be so good to have you home again to stay!" she would say
every time when Mrs. Ware rose to start back, ending her good-bye
embrace with a tight squeeze. "I miss you so I can hardly stand it. The
house is so still when you are gone, that if a fly happens to get in its
buzz sounds like a roar. You can't imagine how deathly still it is."

"Oh, yes, I can!" laughed Mrs. Ware. "I've been left alone myself. I
don't need to imagine. I've experienced it."

Mary hung over the gate to which she had followed her mother, and
looked after her down the road, thinking, "That never occurred to me
before. Of course, if I miss her as I do, quiet as she is, she would
miss a rattletybang person like me twice as much. I had never thought of
_her_ getting lonely, but she'd be bound to if I went away. How'd I feel
if she'd gone with Joyce and I had to stay here day after day alone, and
know that I'd never have her again except on flying visits, and that she
was wrapped up in all sorts of interests that I could never have a part
in?"

All that evening she thought about it, and all next morning; and when
Mrs. Ware came home in the afternoon she met her with a serious
question:

"Mamma, when I'm away from home and you're here by yourself, do you miss
me as much as I do you?"

"Oh, a thousand times more!" was the quick answer.

"Then I've made up my mind. Promised Land or no Promised Land, I'm not
going away to stay until Jack brings Betty here to take my place."