There was something exciting about the beautiful coat that wrapped round her so close. It was a little as if Mrs. Morrison herself held her, wrapped her round in her kindness. Every once in a while Laurel would rub her cheek against the soft fur of the high collar. It felt like Mrs. Morrison’s hair the day after it had been washed, and she had let Laurel brush it, and twist it up, and stick the hairpins in. It smelled like it, too—fresh, clean like a flower-garden after rain. Laurel drew in great deep breaths of the soft brown sable. It’s Mrs. Morrison, she pretended with all the sentimentality of thirteen.

Gazing up into the sky from out of the fur collar, Laurel could see the full round moon above her. She’s following me to New York, she made-believe. She’s going to follow me wherever I go, always and always, and I can look up at her and see her whenever the moon is full, and tell her how lovely I think she is, and try to be like her. I shan’t care so much if people are horrid after this.

“Well, Laurel,” interrupted Stephen, “how did you get along?”

“All right.”

“Was it very terrible?”

“Not very.”

“How did you like the boys?”

“All right.”

“And how did you like Mrs. Morrison?”

Gazing up at the moon, Laurel replied fervently, “I think Mrs. Morrison is the loveliest lady I ever knew.”

“Do you?” her father exclaimed; “oh, do you, Lollie, Dear?”

Lollie! Suddenly Laurel stiffened inside the long coat. Lollie!

“I mean,” she added, with the exaltation all gone out of her voice, “I mean next to—next to—” It had to be. She couldn’t avoid the word, “next to my mother.”

All the rest of the way back to the hotel Laurel didn’t once glance up at the moon. How could she—oh, how could she have become a part of the picture on the screen, while her mother was still in the audience, out there, in the dark, looking on?

Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

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