Mother says, too, that a good rule in stories is to leave out
introductions, and so I will follow her advice and plunge into the
middle of my first morning. It was early summer and very lovely, and I
was feeling half-sad and half-glad, with the gladness surpassing the
sadness, because I had never before been half so proud and important.
Father and mother, after talking and planning and hesitating over it a
long while, were actually going on a journey just by themselves and
without me; and I, being now considered old enough and steady enough,
was to stay at home, keep house, and take care of dear grandmamma. With
Aunt Hetty at the helm, the good old servant, whose black face had
beamed over my cradle fifteen years ago, and whose strong arms had come
between mother and every roughness during her twenty years of
housekeeping, it really looked as if I might be trusted, and as if
mother need not give me so many anxious directions. Did mother think me
a baby? I wondered resentfully. Father always reads my face like an open
page.
"Thee may leave something to Milly's discretion, dear," he said, in his
slow, stately way.
"Thee forgets her inexperience, love," said my gentle mother.
Father and mother are always courtly and tender with one another, never
hasty of speech, never impatient. They have been lovers, and then they
are gentlefolk. Father waited, and mother kept on telling me about
grandmamma and the cat, the birds and the best china, the fire on the
hearth in cool evenings, and the last year's canned fruit, which might
as well be used up while she was away, particularly the cherries and
plums.
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