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Hobson walked up to the bed and took one of the little old hands between her own powerful ones. "Miss Damaris wants you, ma'am." She spoke with certain conviction; then added, "I've had a dream, ma'am. I saw nothing, but I heard Miss Damaris calling you. It woke me up. 'Marraine, she said, 'I want you. That was all. And she does, ma'am."
Then he seemed cool and respectful and almost commonplace, and Tamara felt none of the satisfaction she should have done from this changed order of things. At the bridge tournament he made no appearance whatever. "Why do we see Prince Milaslávski so seldom when we go out, Marraine?" she asked her godmother one day. "I thought all these people were his intimate friends!"
"May I call you Marraine, Princess?" she asked. "I never knew my mother, and it sounds nice." "Indeed, yes!" the Princess said, and she rose and kissed Tamara. "Your mother was very dear to me, long ago, before you were born, we spent a wild season together of youth and happiness. You shall take the place of my child Tamara, if she had lived."
Marraine!" she cried rapturously, "my own darling Marraine!" "Why will you let the child give you that ridiculous name, my dear?" protested grandmamma, disapprovingly. "Because because I have the right to it," laughed the lady, as Polly nestled close to her side. "I am her godmother real and true, am I not, Polykins? And we like the pretty French name for it better."
Tamara's maid had been left in Petersburg, and indeed her godmother's, an elderly Russian accustomed to these excursions, had been the only one brought. "I won't be more than half an hour dressing," she said. "Don't go down without me, Marraine." And the Princess promised and returned to her room.
"Oh, much better!" assented Polly. "'Godmother' is too old and solemn to suit Marraine. Oh!" "All the way from Newport!" answered the lady. "Why, that dear letter you sent would have brought me from the moon. You will be ten years old to-night, it said, ten years old! O Pollykins! Pollykins!" I could and I would, so here I am! And here is your birthday present."
"Once there were no continuous obstacles to his will, he would be gentle and adoring, he would be as tender and thoughtful as he is to me when I am ill." Then into Tamara's brain there rushed visions of the unutterable pleasure this tenderness would mean, and she said: "Don't let us talk; I want to sleep, Marraine." And in the morning they arrived at Moscow.
Andrew's dropped in without ceremony; for Marraine had welcome for all, now that she was a fixed star in her real home and her real place.
Marraine, Polly's Marraine, Aunt Winnie's old friend, the lovely, silver-robed lady of the party who had stood by Dan in his trouble! it was she, indeed, all dressed in white, with a pretty little cap on her soft, wavy hair, and her hands full of flowers. Miss Stella always made a first appearance at a patient's bedside with flowers. She said they were a friendly introduction that never failed.
It seemed altogether astounding; for sick nurses, in Dan's experience, had always been fat old ladies who had out-lived all other duties, and appeared only on important occasions, to gossip in solemn whispers, and to drink unlimited tea. And now Polly's Marraine was a nurse! It was impossible to doubt the fact; for Father Tom was leading her straight to Mr.
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