A happy woman
state on the front seat of the car.
"Grannie said I might come and meet you, Dad. It seems years since you
went away."
Then she caught sight of Sara, and screamed with delight.
"She's going to be a birthday surprise to Grannie," said Graham.
"Oh, how loverly! Oh, Miss Darling, let me hug you. What a birthday
Grannie will have! Have you brought your baby?"
"No, he is staying at home helping to amuse his daddy," said Sara.
"Why, True, you are getting quite fat and rosy!"
"Ah, you wait and see me when we live in the country!" said the child
dimpling with smiles. "All the wishes of my life are coming true.
It's almost as good as fairyland to me, that house is! There's an
orchard where a swing can be put, and there's a loft and woodshed and
henhouses, and a pond for ducks. And now you've come, couldn't we all
go and see the house to-morrow for a birthday treat for Grannie?"
"I really think we might," said Graham. "We'll all take a holiday,
True."
The child clapped her hands. Then she looked thoughtful.
"Where are you going to hide Miss Darling till to-morrow morning? If
she's a birthday present, she mustn't be given to Grannie till then."
"Do you think I ought to be made a parcel of?" asked Sara, laughing.
"Wrapped in brown paper and laid on the breakfast table?"
True did not laugh.
"There's only one person who could lift you in his arms and carry you,
if you were a parcel, and that is Daddy," she said gravely.
And then Graham and Sara laughed out together.
"No," said Graham, presently; "you and I will go and tell Grannie that
her birthday present is waiting outside the door. That it has come
overnight to be sure to be in time."
"Yes, and Grannie will go outside and find her."
True was quite excited in thinking about it.
"My birthday present will be nothing," she said, "'nothing' after this.
I've got Grannie some coloured pockethandkerchers, Miss Darling. Three
lovely ones with pictures on them, there's a boat on a sea on one, and
a man grinding a organ on another, and a boy and a windmill on the
other, and I really don't know which I like the best of them!"
"I'm sure Grannie will like them all," said Sara, comfortingly.
They reached the house. Sara looked at it with interest. Mrs. Laird had
never moved from her cousin's house, and Graham had come back to her
there. There was no garden in front. It faced the street, but it was
at the quiet end of the High Street, and most of the traffic was lower
down. The drawing-room was upstairs.
True with delighted face crept upstairs on tiptoe. Graham and Sara
followed.
Then Sara stayed outside in the long narrow passage, whilst the others
went into the room.
They left the door ajar, and she heard Mrs. Laird's pleased welcome.
She also heard—
"And did you see my dear Sara in town?"
Then True's eager little voice—
"And Daddy's brought you such a big birthday present, Grannie, that we
couldn't carry it in, and it's waiting for you outside the door."
"Oh, Graham, you have not been wasting your money on me?"
True burst into giggles of delight. She danced up and down.
"Go and fetch it in, Grannie! Fetch it in quick, quick!"
The door opened, and Mrs. Laird appeared with a puzzled smiling face.
Then she and Sara were in each other's arms.
"Oh, my dear! My dear! How I have prayed and longed for you!"
She drew her in, and when True's excitement had subsided a little, she
was sent upstairs to tidy herself for tea.
Then Graham drew near, and took Sara's hand in his.
"She has only come for a very short visit now, mother, but she is going
to be your daughter, and coming to us for good and all very soon."
And then Mrs. Laird was quite overcome, and began to wipe away the
tears of joy that were springing to her eyes.
"I have felt lately that joy was coming to us," she said. "It has not
been only the lovely spring weather. I had a strange feeling that good
was on the way to us!"
She sat down in her easy-chair, and held Sara by the hand as if she
could not let her go.
"Oh, Sara, I have sometimes felt that life has been an effort without
you. How good God is to give you back to us!"
"Dear Mrs. Laird," whispered Sara, "my heart has been with you all the
time."
When tea came in, they talked in soberer fashion. Graham sketched out
plans for the next day. A picnic lunch was to be taken in the car, and
eaten in the house that was to become their home. Then they could have
leisure to look over it in every detail, and he would ask his builder
and decorator to come out in the afternoon and discuss all necessary
repairs and alterations.
Mrs. Laird was as pleased as True with the prospect. Later on, she
carried off Sara to her bedroom, and there they sat and talked till
nearly dinnertime.
"You are going to make my boy happy at last. If any one deserves you,
I consider he does. And oh, Sara dear, he has so softened since poor
Eva's death. I wonder if he has told you, as he did me, how it was her
pitiful appeals to him that made him marry her? At first, he was very
reticent about it, until one day when we were talking about you, I
said I feared you would consider that Eva had taken your place in his
affections. Then he said, with a hurt look in his eyes—
"'Oh, mother, if you had seen her stabbed to the heart by a surgeon's
blunt truthfulness, if you had heard her sobs, and realized her
weakness and loneliness and dread of life, lived on without a soul to
cheer or speak to her, you wouldn't have wondered at my consent. She
was unnerved or she would not have let me see her heart. I knew it
would be but a very short time. I couldn't resist her appeals for help
and comfort. And though I felt afterwards that I might have made a
mistake, the time came when I saw that I had not.'
"He really was led to see things differently, Sara, through reading the
Bible to his wife. You forgive him for that tragic marriage?"
"Forgive him, dear Mrs. Laird? There is no forgiveness needed. It has
only shown me his chivalrous tenderness to a dying woman. He had no
thought for himself, only for her. I don't believe another man in the
world would have acted so!"
That was a very happy evening.
Sara was taken all over the house, and shown the wing which was devoted
to clubrooms and classrooms for the colliers and their wives and
children.
She asked Graham what he thought of doing with the old house.
"You will keep on the clubs and classes, will you not?"
"Most emphatically. My idea is to keep the wing of this house exactly
as it stands, and put a caretaker into it. I can let off the private
part of the house very easily. You see we have a car, and whenever you
or my mother want to come into town, you can do so."
Then Mrs. Laird said very quietly—
"Of course we have not discussed everything yet. I am wondering if
you two had not better start your married life alone. A mother and
mother-in-law is not always a success in the house. And I have been
living alone until lately. I can do so again."
Sara shot a quick look at Graham, who just smiled at her.
"Dear Mrs. Laird," she said, slipping her hand into Mrs. Laird's arm,
"I will not marry Graham unless you live with us; and if you ask him,
he will say the same. We want the rest of your life to be a blaze of
sunshine. We do not want you to have the slightest shadow across your
path. It will be one of my joys to see you happy. We all love each
other so much, that our lives would be spoiled away from each other."
"And True and I have chosen a lovely sunny room for Grannie's
sitting-room," said Graham; "so that when she wants quiet and rest, she
can have it."
Then Mrs. Laird said, smiling through the tears that came so easily
this evening—
"Don't you think that there will be rest and comfort wherever Sara is?
She has made our happiness in the past, and she wouldn't be Sara if she
does not make it still."
Graham turned to Sara with a smile.
"There!" he said. "Those are our sentiments. I can't add more, except
that it will be my part to take care of you, and to try to do it as
well as you take care of others!"
CHAPTER X
THEIR FUTURE HOME
MRS. LAIRD'S birthday welcomed her with bright sunshine and a cloudless
blue sky. True was in her bedroom long before breakfast time,
presenting her wonderful handkerchiefs, and chattering gaily about the
delights in front of them.
"Run away, chatterbox," said Mrs. Laird at length, "or Grannie will be
late for breakfast."
"I'll go this very minute."
But her hand on the door handle, she paused.
"Isn't it a very comfortable feeling, Grannie, that Miss Darling is in
our house? I thought about it direckly I woke."
"And that was Grannie's first thought too," said Mrs. Laird.
The car came round very soon after breakfast. The luncheon basket
was packed in, plenty of rugs taken in case it might be chilly, and
then Mrs. Laird, Sara, and True were tucked up comfortably on the
broad seat together. Graham drove himself. They sped away through the
busy streets, past the collieries with their high shafts and smoky
surroundings, along a straight dusty road where the coal dust seemed to
begrime all the fresh green foliage of bush and tree.
Then they climbed slowly a long, steep hill, and then had a wonderful
glimpse of the moor stretching away in flat marshes and gentle
undulations of heather-covered slopes. The air was fresh and pungent;
they passed a fir wood, then some coverts, and at last turned into a
real country lane which led them slowly down to some tall iron gates
flanked by a high brick wall. Through the gates they sped up a short
avenue of beeches, and then swept round before the old red brick house.
Very sunny and homey it looked that morning. The lawn in front wanted
mowing, the flower-beds were untidy and overgrown, the drive beginning
to show weeds in great patches over it. But the house stood serene and
sweet. A white jasmine was just coming out and overhung the porch.
Japonica was framing the lower windows, and an ancient magnolia mounted
nearly to the roof on one side of the house.
Graham had the keys, and unlocked the door himself as there was no
caretaker.
The hall was broad and roomy, the oak staircase went up from it at the
back. There was a high dado of oak panelling round the hall. Out of it
on one side spread a long drawing-room with five windows. Behind it a
comfortable smoking-room overlooking a side Dutch garden with tiled
paths. On the other side of the hall was the dining-room, a similar
size to the drawing-room, with the same five windows, and behind
that a very pleasant morning-room which opened on one side into a
conservatory, and looked out at the back upon a rose garden.
Sara was delighted with this room.
"I know some people do not care to be in a room next to a conservatory,
but I love it. I remember we had a room at my old home like this, and I
remember as a child how I loved the scent of the heliotrope and lemon
verbena that grew in it."
Then they went out and looked over the kitchen premises which were
rather extensive, but all in good repair. True was anxious to explore
the garden, but Graham said that Sara must see the rest of the house
first. The rooms on the next floor were all sunny and spacious. True
pointed out to Sara the one she had chosen for her.
"You can see the dear little church and village between the hills out
of the window, and the moor is over there too. Don't you like it, Miss
Darling?"
"I like every room that I see," said Sara, enthusiastically.
And then they went to the room which had a western outlook, and which
Graham thought would suit his mother for a sitting-room. She said at
once how much she would like it. The top floor contained the nurseries,
and at the back some servants' rooms. True was delighted with the