"What do you mean by 'middle-aged'?" demanded Diana sharply.

"Why, anything over thirty! I call _my_ mother middle-aged."

"Do you?"

"Of course!" (Meg was still examining the photo.) "What a perfectly glorious dress to be taken in! And I adore her necklace. She's like the pictures one sees in _The Queen_. It must be lovely to have a pretty mother."

Diana was looking at Meg with an unfathomable expression in her grey eyes.

"Don't you call your mother pretty, then?" she asked.

"Oh, yes! she's a darling; but she's had her day. She's not a society beauty, is she?"

"N-n-n-o, I suppose not," said Diana thoughtfully.

The boys came into the room just then; the conversation was interrupted, and Meg probably forgot all about it. Diana, however, did not. At lunch-time she critically studied her hostess's features, and mentally compared them with those of the photo which had arrived that morning from Paris.

"I don't believe Mrs. Fleming is really any older than Mother," she decided. "She's been very pretty some time, but she's let herself go.

It's a pity. All the same, I could shake Meg!"

An impression that had been gathering in Diana's mind ever since she arrived at the Vicarage now shaped itself into definite form. She did not like the att.i.tude of her friends towards their mother. They were devoted to her, but their love lacked all element of admiration. Mrs.

Fleming had made the common mistake of effacing herself utterly for the sake of her children. She had dropped her former accomplishments, even the music in which she had once excelled, and made herself an absolute slave to her household. So long as Meg and Elsie wore pretty frocks she cared nothing for her own dress; she never bought a new book or took a holiday; her interests were centred in the young people's achievements, and she had become merely the theatre of their actions. Going away seldom, and reading little, had narrowed her horizon. She often felt her ideas were out of date, and that she was not keeping up with the modern notions her children were imbibing at school. They always spoke with more respect of their teachers' opinions than of hers, and would allude to subjects they were learning as if they did not expect her to understand them. Sometimes they a.s.sumed little airs of patronage towards her. Among themselves they occasionally referred to her as "Only Mother!"

Diana, thinking it all carefully over, raged mentally. "I guess I've got to make those Flemings admire their mother!" she said to herself. "Just how to do it beats me at present, but I don't give up. I'd like to fix her hair for her if I dared. She strains it back till she looks like a skinned rabbit, and her dresses were made in the year one, I should say.

She's a dear, all the same, though. If she could only be cured of feeling on the shelf, she'd grow ten years younger."

Having set herself the surprising undertaking of rejuvenating Mrs.

Fleming, Diana went warily to work. It would certainly not do to reproach Meg, Elsie, and the boys for lack of appreciation of their mother; they would simply have stared in utter amazement. Somehow, by hook or by crook, she must be made to shine, so as to command their honest admiration. Diana catalogued her personal attractions:

1. A really quite cla.s.sical nose.

2. A nice, neat mouth.

3. Good teeth.

4. A pretty colour when she gets hot or excited.

5. Quite fascinating brown eyes.

6. Hair that would be lovely if it were only decently done, instead of scooped away and screwed into a tight k.n.o.b at the back.

Anybody with these points might make so much of them, if they only knew how to use them properly. Diana wondered if it would be possible to buy a book on the secrets of fascination. It was just the element that was lacking. Putting personality aside, she began probing into the extent of her friend's mental equipment. She induced her to bring out the water-colour sketches of former years, and even wrung from her a half promise that some day--when the weather was nice, and if she had time--she would paint a picture of the church.

"The boys would each like a sketch of their mother's to take to school with them," decreed Diana. "Monty would have his framed and hang it in his study, and show it to all his friends as _your_ work."

"Why, so he might," said Mrs. Fleming, looking much surprised. The idea had evidently never occurred to her before.

From painting, Diana pa.s.sed to other accomplishments. Mrs. Fleming rendered the accompaniments to Elsie's violin pieces and Meg's songs with a delicacy of touch that revealed the true musician.

"I wish you'd play something to me," begged Diana one day when the girls' practising was over and their mother was rising from the piano.

"_I_, my dear child! I never play now."

"Why not?"

"I gave up my music long ago, when I got married."

"You haven't forgotten it, though."

"Well, not altogether, of course. I'm a good reader still."

"Please!" urged Diana.

And, to content her impetuous visitor, Mrs. Fleming gave in. She pulled a volume of Chopin from the stand, and began the twelfth nocturne. It was years since she had played it, but as she touched the keys the old spirit crept back into her fingers, and the notes came rippling out delicately and easily. Diana, sunk back in the recesses of the long basket-chair, listened fascinated. She loved music when it was of a superior quality, and she did not often get the chance of hearing playing such as this.

"More! More!" she begged, when the nocturne came to an end.

The ice once broken, Mrs. Fleming, as much to her own astonishment as to that of the family, actually revived her interest in the piano. She hunted out her old pieces and began to practise them. She said it was to amuse Diana, but it was evident that enjoyment was mixed with her philanthropy. As a girl she had studied under a good master, and she had much natural talent. She would improvise sometimes, and even compose little things of her own.

"Why, my dear," said her husband, peeping into the drawing-room one evening just at the conclusion of the "Moonlight Sonata", "this takes me back to the time when we were engaged! I've been sitting listening in my study."

Diana, squatting on one foot in the corner of the sofa, clapped her hands softly. She liked the Vicar, but she thought his antiquarian researches monopolized the conversation at meal-times. It was quite nice to hear him express appreciation for some other line than his own. Diana had a scheme in her mind, and, when she judged the time was ripe, she proposed it suddenly and boldly in the face of the whole united family of Flemings. It was nothing more or less than that Mrs. Fleming should play a solo at the concert which was to be held at the schools on the 10th of January. In vulgar parlance, she "shot her bird sitting", plumped the idea upon her, and dragged forth an acceptance before--as the poor lady afterwards protested--she had time to realize what she was undertaking.

"Certainly. Why not?" confirmed her husband. "We badly want some more items on the programme. I shall put you down for two solos."

"But what _can_ I play?" remonstrated Mrs. Fleming.

"Oh, Mother, you know heaps of things! Don't be absurd!" reproved Meg.

"I guess we'll have a rehearsal to-night, and choose your star pieces,"

said Diana, with shining eyes.

So far, so good. Her plot had answered admirably. The family took it almost as a matter of course that "Mother" was to perform at the concert, though it had never occurred to any of them to ask her to do so.

"She's a very good pianist," said Meg airily to Diana.

"Glad you think so!" rapped out Diana, with an emphasis that made Meg stare and whisper afterwards to Elsie that she couldn't quite somehow get at the back of "Stars and Stripes".

It was a mighty matter to select the two solos. Mrs. Fleming, fl.u.s.tered and bewildered at this unexpected dive into publicity, hesitated among many pieces. As she could not make up her own mind, Diana made it up for her.

"We want the 'Moonlight Sonata' for one, and Chopin's 'Ballade in A flat' for the other," she decided. "They're cla.s.sical, but they're so exquisite that I guess even the old women will enjoy them. Then for the encores you could play----"

"Encores!" gasped Mrs. Fleming feebly.

"Why, of course there'll be encores! Schubert's 'Hedge Roses' for one, and that nocturne of your own for the other. It'll just about take the house!"

So Mrs. Fleming, with an extraordinary feeling that she had somehow been whisked back to her school-days, sat practising in the drawing-room, with Diana, curled up in the corner of the sofa for audience. It was a dream-world for them both. Diana had been reading _Stories of the Great Composers_, and now she knew the hearts of the musicians she could enter more fully into the meaning of their music. She had fallen, utterly and entirely, under the magic spell of Chopin; the lovely, liquid melodies thrilled her like the echo of something beyond her earthly experience, and seemed to go soaring away into regions she had not yet explored, regions of breathless beauty, though only entered by the gates of sorrow. She would read Alfred Noyes's poem on Chopin as she sat listening to the haunting, bewitching rhythm of the "Ballade in A", and the ring of the poetry merged itself into the glamour of the music, so that ever afterwards she connected the two.

"'Do roses in the moonlight glow Like this and this?' I could not see His eyes, and yet--they were quite wet, Blinded, I think! What should I be If in that hour I did not know My own diviner debt?"