"Why should we, Ma?" inquired Cora."We've never seen one of them--except Madam Weatherstone!""We'll never forget _her!"_ said Madeline, with delicate decision, laying down the silk necktie she was knitting for Roscoe."What _beautiful_ manners she had!""How rich is she, mother? Do you know?" asked Dora.
"Rich enough to do something for Roscoe, I'm sure, if she had a proper family spirit," replied Mrs.Warden."Her mother was own cousin to my grandmother--one of the Virginia Paddingtons.Or she might do something for you girls.""I wish she would!" Adeline murmured, softly, her large eyes turned to the horizon, her hands in her lap over the handkerchief she was marking for Roscoe.
"Don't be ungrateful, Adeline," said her mother, firmly."You have a good home and a good brother; no girl ever had a better.""But there is never anything going on," broke in Coraline, in a tone of complaint; "no parties, no going away for vacations, no anything.""Now, Cora, don't be discontented! You must not add a straw to dear Roscoe's burdens," said her mother.
"Of course not, mother; I wouldn't for the world.I never saw her but that once; and she wasn't very cordial.But, as you say, she might do _something._ She might invite us to visit her.""If she ever comes back again, I'm going to recite for her," said, Dora, firmly.
Her mother gazed fondly on her youngest."I wish you could, dear," she agreed."I'm sure you have talent; and Madam Weatherstone would recognize it.And Adeline's music too.And Cora's art.I am very proud of my girls."Cora sat where the light fell well upon her work.She was illuminating a volume of poems, painting flowers on the margins, in appropriate places--for Roscoe.
"I wonder if he'll care for it?" she said, laying down her brush and holding the book at arm's length to get the effect.
"Of course he will!" answered her mother, warmly."It is not only the beauty of it, but the affection! How are you getting on, Dora?"Dora was laboring at a task almost beyond her fourteen years, consisting of a negligee shirt of outing flannel, upon the breast of which she was embroidering a large, intricate design--for Roscoe.She was an ambitious child, but apt to tire in the execution of her large projects.
"I guess it'll be done," she said, a little wearily."What are you going to give him, mother?""Another bath-robe; his old one is so worn.And nothing is too good for my boy.""He's coming," said Adeline, who was still looking down the road; and they all concealed their birthday work in haste.
A tall, straight young fellow, with an air of suddenly-faced maturity upon him, opened the gate under the pepper trees and came toward them.
He had the finely molded features we see in portraits of handsome ancestors, seeming to call for curling hair a little longish, and a rich profusion of ruffled shirt.But his hair was sternly short, his shirt severely plain, his proudly carried head spoke of effort rather than of ease in its attitude.
Dora skipped to meet him, Cora descended a decorous step or two.
Madeline and Adeline, arm in arm, met him at the piazza edge, his mother lifted her face.
"Well, mother, dear!" Affectionately he stooped and kissed her, and she held his hand and stroked it lovingly.The sisters gathered about with teasing affection, Dora poking in his coat-pocket for the stick candy her father always used to bring her, and her brother still remembered.
"Aren't you home early, dear?" asked Mrs.Warden.
"Yes; I had a little headache"--he passed his hand over his forehead--"and Joe can run the store till after supper, anyhow." They flew to get him camphor, cologne, a menthol-pencil.Dora dragged forth the wicker lounge.He was laid out carefully and fanned and fussed over till his mother drove them all away.
"Now, just rest," she said."It's an hour to supper time yet!" And she covered him with her latest completed afghan, gathering up and carrying away the incomplete one and its tumultuous constituents.
He was glad of the quiet, the fresh, sweet air, the smell of flowers instead of the smell of molasses and cheese, soap and sulphur matches.
But the headache did not stop, nor the worry that caused it.He loved his mother, he loved his sisters, he loved their home, but he did not love the grocery business which had fallen so unexpectedly upon him at his father's death, nor the load of debt which fell with it.
That they need never have had so large a "place" to "keep up" did not occur to him.He had lived there most of his life, and it was home.
That the expenses of running the household were three times what they needed to be, he did not know.His father had not questioned their style of living, nor did he.That a family of five women might, between them, do the work of the house, he did not even consider.
Mrs.Warden's health was never good, and since her husband's death she had made daily use of many afghans on the many lounges of the house.
Madeline was "delicate," and Adeline was "frail"; Cora was "nervous,"Dora was "only a child." So black Sukey and her husband Jonah did the work of the place, so far as it was done; and Mrs.Warden held it a miracle of management that she could "do with one servant," and the height of womanly devotion on her daughters' part that they dusted the parlor and arranged the flowers.
Roscoe shut his eyes and tried to rest, but his problem beset him ruthlessly.There was the store--their one and only source of income.
There was the house, a steady, large expense.There were five women to clothe and keep contented, beside himself.There was the unappeasable demand of the mortgage--and there was Diantha.
