Madge Mortons Secret | Page 5

their second houseboat holiday.
"You don't need any one's help when it comes to having your own
way," retorted Mrs. Butler. "What do you wish this time?"
Madge lowered her voice. "Auntie, you know that upstairs in Mother's
old trunk there are two rolls of silk--a roll of rose-color and one of
turquoise blue. You have always said that Father brought them home to
Mother from China just after I was born, and that Mother never had
them made into dresses, because she died soon afterward, when Father
failed to return from his trip."
Mrs. Butler bowed her head quietly. She looked away from her niece.
"Yes, that is what I have told you. I am saving the silks until you are
older. You have very little else of your mother's except her jewelry."
Madge clasped her hands together pleadingly. "O Aunt Sue! why must
I wait until I am grown for those silks? I wish you to give them to
Nellie and me now. Please, please do. I am sure we are old enough to
appreciate them. Nellie would be a perfect dream in the pink silk, and I
should dearly love to have the blue. We never, never can need the
dresses more than we do now! Why, in two or three years Nellie and I
may be rich! Who knows? What is the use in keeping them for some
future time, when Nellie and I need them at the present moment? You
know we ought to have one handsome gown apiece, Auntie. Mrs.
Curtis and Madeleine are always beautifully dressed."
"Yes, Mother, please let Madge have her way," entreated Nellie. "But I
can't accept one of the frocks. I wouldn't take it away from you for the
world."
"Very well, Auntie," replied Madge, with a little choke in her voice. "I
am sorry I mentioned the subject to you. I don't care for the silks, then.
I won't even look at them, unless Nellie will take one of them."

"Silly Madge!" remonstrated Eleanor, coming up behind her cousin and
tweaking a loose curl of her auburn hair. "I know you wish me to share
everything with you, and I thank you just the same. But, Madge, I can't
accept one of those dresses. Don't you see, they were your mother's,
and that makes all the difference in the world."
"I can't see what difference it makes if I wish to do it. You always
divide everything you have with me, and I don't see why you can't let
me be generous for once."
Madge's eyes were misty. The thought of her mother and father made it
hard for her to speak without emotion. "Besides," she added, smiling in
her charming fashion, "I will never wear a pink gown. No one need try
to persuade me. It wouldn't be in keeping with my red hair!"
Eleanor put her arm around her cousin. She understood the little quaver
in Madge's laughing voice.
"Of course I will have the dress, if you feel that way about it," she said
gently. "And I shall adore it. Why, I can see myself in it this minute,
with a pink rose fastened in my hair. But all this time you and I have
been arguing Mother has not yet said that you could use the silks.
Please consent, Mother; there's a dear."
Mrs. Butler looked grave. "I suppose it is all right," she hesitated. "The
silks belong to Madge and she is old enough to decide what she wishes
to do with them. Look in my left-hand bureau drawer, Madge; you will
find the key to your mother's trunk there. The silks are in the bottom of
the trunk, wrapped in a piece of old, yellow muslin. We might as well
find out whether the material is still good before we decide what we
will do about it. I must go back now to my jelly; it must be nearly
done."
"Come up to the attic with me, won't you, Eleanor?" invited Madge.
Eleanor shook her head. She knew her cousin liked best to make these
visits to her mother's trunk alone. "No," she answered, "I must help
Mother with the jelly."

Nellie slipped quietly away and left Madge looking dreamily out on the
elm-shaded lawn, her thoughts busy with the story of her own past and
the little she knew of her father.
He had been a captain in the United States Navy, and one of the
youngest officers in the service. The Mortons were an old Virginia
family, and after Robert Morton's graduation from Annapolis he was
rapidly promoted in the service. He had married Mrs. Butler's only
sister, Eleanor, for whom Nellie was named. Two months after Madge's
birth, while her husband was away on a cruise, Madge's mother died at
her