RE-CREATIONS

RE-CREATIONS
BY
GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL
AUTHOR OF
TOMORROW ABOUT THIS TIME,
THE CITY OF FIRE,
MARCIA SCHUYLER, Etc.

PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
LONDON

COPYRIGHT, 1921, 1922, BY GOLDEN RULE COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
PRINTED IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

RE-CREATIONS

CHAPTER I

Cornelia Copley pressed her face against the window-pane of the car and smiled with brave showing of courage as the train moved away from the platform where her college mates huddled eagerly for the last glimpse of her.

“Don’t forget to write, Cornie!” shouted a girl with black eyes and a frantic green sweater over a green and yellow striped sport-skirt.

“Remember you’re to decorate my house when I’m married!” screamed a pink-cheeked damsel with blue eyes and bewitching dimples.

“Be sure to come back for commencement!” chorused three others as the train got fairly under way.

Cornelia watched the staid old gray buildings pencilled over with the fine lines of vines that would burst into green tenderness as soon as the spring should appear, and thought how many good times she had had within those walls, and, how terrible, how simply unthinkable it was that they were over forever, and she would never be able to graduate! With gathering tears in her throat and blurring into her vision she watched till the last flutter of the flag on the top of Dwight Hall vanished, the big old cherry-tree gnarled and black against the November sky faded into the end of the library, and even the college hedge was too far back to discern; then she settled slowly back into her seat, much as a bit of wax candle might melt and droop before the outpouring of sudden heat. She dropped into her seat so sadly and so crushingly that the sweet-faced lady in the long seal-skin coat across the aisle turned and looked commiseratingly at her. Poor child! Now what was she having to endure she wondered, as she watched the sweet lips drop at the corners, the dimples around the eyes disappear, and the long lashes sweep down too late to catch the great tear that suddenly rolled out and down the round, fair cheek.

Cornelia sat with her face turned toward the window, and watched the familiar way for a long time through unseeing eyes. She was really looking into a hard and cruel future that had suddenly swooped down upon her and torn her from her mates, her career in life, all that she thought she held dear, and was sending her to an undesirable home among a family who did not understand her and her aspirations nor appreciate her ability. Her mouth took on hard little alien lines, and her deep, dreamy eyes looked almost steely in their distress. It all seemed so unnecessary. Why couldn’t father understand that her career meant so much, and another year or two in college would put her where she could be her own mistress and not be dependent upon him? Of course she couldn’t argue with him about it just now after that rather touching letter he had written; but if he had only understood how important it was that she should go on and finish her course, if only any of them had ever understood, she was sure he would have managed someway to get along without recalling her. She took out the letter and read it over again. After all, she had scarcely had time to read it carefully in all its details, for a telegram had followed close upon it bidding her come at once, as she was badly needed, and of course she had packed up and started. This was the letter, written in a cramped, clerkly hand:

“Dear Daughter,

“I am very sorry to have to tell you that your mother, who has been keeping up for the last six months by sheer force of will, has given out, and seems to be in quite a serious condition. The doctor has told us that nothing but absolute rest and an entire change will save her to us, and of course you will understand that we are so rejoiced over the hope he holds out that we are trying to forget the sorrow and anxiety of the present, and to get along as best we can without her. I have just returned from taking her, with the assistance of a trained nurse, to the Rest Cure Sanitarium at Quiet Valley over at the other end of the State, where the doctor tells me she will have just the conditions and treatment that her case requires. You will be glad to know that she was quite satisfied to go, feeling that it was the only possible thing left to do, and her main distress was that you would have to leave college and come home to take her place. My dear Nellie, it grieves me to the heart to have to write this and ask you to leave your beloved work and come home to help us live, but I see no other way out. Your Aunt Pennell has broken her leg, and will not be able to be about all winter; and, even if she were well enough, she never seems to understand how to get along with Harry and Louise.

“And then, even if there were any one else, I must tell you that there is another reason why coming home is necessary. It is that I cannot afford to let you stay at college. I cannot tell you how hard it looks to me written out on paper, and how my spirit sinks beneath the thought that I have come to this, that I cannot afford to let my daughter finish her education as she had planned, because I have not been able to make money enough to do all the other things that have to be done also. I have tried to keep the knowledge of my heavy losses from you until you should be through with your work at college. Mother and I thought we could get along and not let you know about it, because we knew you would insist on coming right home and helping; but now since mother has broken down you will have to be told the truth. Indeed, I strongly suspect that your mother in her great love for you and the others has brought on this weak state of health by overdoing, although we tried all we could to keep her from working too hard. You will, I know, want to help in every way you can, so that we shall be able to surround your dear mother with every necessity and even luxury that she should have, and so make her recovery more sure and speedy. It costs a good deal at Quiet Valley. It is an expensive place; but nothing is too good for your dear patient mother, who has quietly been giving her very life for us all without letting us know how ill she was.

“There is another painful thing I must tell you, and that is that we have had to move from our old home, also on account of the expense, and you will not find it nearly so pleasant or convenient here as at the old house; but I know my brave daughter will bear it like a soldier, and be as helpful and resourceful as her mother has always been. It gives me great comfort to think of your immediate coming, for Louise is working too hard for so young a girl. Harry helps her as much as he can. Moreover, I feel troubled about Carey. He is getting into the habit of staying out late with the boys, and—but you will know how to help him when you get here. You and he were always good comrades. I cannot tell you what a tower of strength you seem to me to be just now in this culmination of trials. Be sure to telegraph me on what train you will arrive, and we will meet you.

“With deep regret at the necessity of this recall, which I know will be a great trial to you,

Your loving father.”

Cornelia looked like anything but a tower of strength as she folded the letter and slipped it back into her hand-bag with a deep-drawn sigh. It had given her the same feeling of finality that had come when she first read it. She had hoped there might be a glimmer, a ray, somewhere in this second reading that would help her to hope she might go back to college pretty soon when she had put the family on its feet again and found the right person to look after them. But this money affair that father laid so much emphasis upon was something that she could not quite understand. If father only understood how much money she could make once she was an interior decorator in some large established firm he would see that a little money spent now would bring large returns. Why, even if he had to borrow some to keep her in college till her course was finished, he would lose nothing in the end.

Cornelia put her head back against the cushion and closed her eyes wearily. She hadn’t slept much the night before, and her nerves were taut and strained. This was the first minute in which she had done anything like relax since the letter came—right into the midst of a junior show in which she had had charge of all the stage settings! It really had been dreadful to leave when she was the only one who knew where everything should be. She had spent half the night before making drawings and coloring them, and explaining to two half-comprehending classmates; but she was sure they would make some terrible mistake somewhere, and she would be blamed with the inharmony of the thing. It was too bad when she had acquired the reputation of being the only girl in college who could make such effects on the stage. Well, it couldn’t be helped!

Of course she was sorry her mother was sick, but father spoke hopefully, confidently about her, and the rest would probably do her good. It wasn’t as if mother were hopelessly ill. She was thankful as any of them that that had not come. But mother had always understood her aspirations, and if she were only at home would show father how unreasonable it was for her to have to give up now when only a year and a half more and the goal would be reached, and she could become a contributing member of the family, rather than just a housekeeper!

Over and over the sorrowful round Cornelia’s thoughts went as mile after mile rushed away under the wheels and home drew nearer. Now and then she thought a little of how it would be when she got home; but when one had to visualize an entirely new home about which one had not heard a thing, not even in what part of the city it was located, how could one anticipate a home-coming? They must have just moved, she supposed, and probably mother had worked too hard settling. Mother always did that. Indeed, Cornelia had been so entirely away from home during her college life that she was almost out of harmony with it, and her sole connection had been gay little letters mostly filled with what she was going to do when she finished her course and became an interior decorator.

It was almost two years since she had been at home, for last summer and the summer before she had spent in taking special courses in a summer school not far from her college, and the intervening Christmas she had been invited to a wonderful house party in New York at the home of one of her classmates who had unlimited money and knew just how to give her friends a good time. Mother had thought these opportunities too good to be wasted, and to her surprise father also had been quite willing for her to spend the extra time and money, and so she had grown quite away from the home and its habits. She began to feel, as she drew nearer and nearer to the home city, almost as if she were going among strangers.

It was growing quite dusky, and lights were glinting out in stray farmhouses along the way. The train was due in the city at seven o’clock. It was almost six, and the box of fudge that the girls had supplied her with had palled upon her. Somehow she did not feel hungry, only sick at heart and woefully homesick for the college, and the ripple of laughter and chatter down the corridors; the jokes about college fish, and rice pudding; the dear, funny interchange of confidences; even the themes that had to be written! How gladly would she go back now and never grumble about anything if she only knew she could finish without an interruption, and then to the city to take bachelor apartments with Mable and Alice as they had planned, and get into big work! O the dreams, the bubbles that were being broken with all their pretty glitter of rainbow hues gone into nothingness! O the drab monotony of simple home life!

So her thoughts beat restlessly through her brain, and drove the tears into her smarting eyes.

Presently the train halted at a station, and a small multitude rushed in, breezy, rough, and dirty, with loud voices and garments covered with grease and soil; toilers of the road, they were going back to the city, tossing their clamor across the car, settling their implements out of the way under their big muddy shoes. One paused before Cornelia’s empty half seat, and suddenly before he could sit down a lady slipped into it, with a smile and a motion toward a whole empty seat across the aisle. The man accepted the offer good-naturedly, summoning a fellow laborer to share it with him, and Cornelia looked up relieved to meet the smile of her seal-clad former neighbor across the aisle.

“I thought it would be pleasanter for us both dear, if I came over here,” she murmured with a smile. “They were pretty strong of garlic.”

“Oh, thank you!” said Cornelia, and then grew shy as she noticed the jewels on the delicate hand that rested on the soft fur. What part had she in life with a woman like this, she who had to leave college because there wasn’t money enough to let her stay till she had finished? Perhaps she was the least bit ungracious to the kindly woman who had made the move obviously for her protection, but the kindly stranger would not be rebuffed.

“I’ve been watching you all the afternoon,” she said. “And I’m glad of this opportunity of getting acquainted with you if you don’t mind. I love young people.”

Cornelia wished her seatmate would keep still or go away but she tried to smile gratefully.

“I was so interested in all those young people who came down to see you off. It reminded me of younger days. Was that a college up on the hill above the station?”

Now indeed was Cornelia’s tongue loosed. Her beloved college! Ah, she could talk about that even to ladies clad in furs and jewels, and she was presently launched in a detailed description of the junior play, her face kindling vividly under the open admiration of the white-haired, beautiful woman, who knew just how to ask the right questions to bring out the girl’s eager tale, and who responded so readily to every point she brought out.

“And how is it that you are going away?” she asked at last. “I should think you could not be spared. You seem to have been the moving spirit in it all. But I suppose you are returning in time to do your part.”

Cornelia’s face clouded over suddenly, and she drew a deep sigh. For the moment she had forgotten. It was almost as if the pretty lady had struck her in the face with her soft, jewelled hand. She seemed to shrink into herself.

“No,” she said at last sadly, “I’m not going back—ever, I’m afraid.” The words came out with a sound almost like a sob, and were wholly unintentional with Cornelia. She was not one to air her sorrows before strangers, or even friends, but somehow the whole tragedy had come over her like a great wave that threatened to engulf her. She was immediately sorry that she had spoken, however, and tried to explain in a tone less tragic. “You see, my mother is not well and had to go away, and—they—needed me at home.”

She lifted her clouded eyes to meet a wealth of admiration in the older woman’s gaze.

“How beautiful! To be needed, I mean,” the lady said with a smile. “I can think just what a tower of strength you will be to your father. Your father is living?”

“Yes,” gasped Cornelia with a sudden thought of how terrible it would be if he were gone. “Oh, yes; and it’s strange—he used these very words when he wrote me to come home.” Then she grew rosy with the realization of how she was thinking out loud to this elegant stranger.

“Of course he would,” assented the lady. “I can see that you are! I was thinking that as I watched you all the afternoon. You seem so capable and so—sweet!”

“Oh, but I’m not!” burst out the girl honestly. “I’ve been real cross about it ever since the letter came. You see,”—and she drew her brows earnestly trying to justify herself,—“you see I can’t help thinking it’s all a mistake. I’m glad to go home and help; but some one else could have done that, and I think I could have helped to better purpose if I had been allowed to stay and finish my course, and then been able to help out financially. Father has lost some money lately, which has made things hard, and I was planning to be an interior decorator. I should soon have been able to do a good deal for them.”

“Oh, but my dear! No one can take a daughter’s place in a home when there is trouble, not such a daughter’s place as you occupy, I’m sure. And as for the other thing, if you have it in you it will come out, you may be sure. You’ll begin by decorating the home interior, and you won’t lose anything in the end. Such things are never lost nor time wasted. God sees to that, if you are doing your best right where He put you. I can just see what an exquisite spot you’ll make of that home, and how it will rest your mother to know you are taking her place.”

Cornelia sadly shook her head.

“There won’t be any chance for decorating,” she said slowly. “They’ve had to move away from the home we owned, and father said it wasn’t very pleasant there.”

“All the more chance for your talents!” said the lady with determined cheerfulness. “I know you have a sense of the beautiful, for I’ve been studying that lovely little hat you wear, and how well it suits your face and tones with your coat and dress and gloves. How ever unpleasant and gloomy that new house may be, it will begin to glow and blossom and give out welcome within a short time after you get there. I should like to look in and prove the truth of my words. Perhaps I shall sometime, who knows? You just can’t help making things fit and beautiful. There’s a look in your face that makes me sure. Count the little house your opportunity, as every trial and test in this world really is, you know, and you’ll see what will come. I know, for I’ve seen it tried again and again.”

“But one can’t do much without money,” sighed Cornelia, “and money is what I had hoped to earn.”

“You’ll earn it yet, very likely; but, even if you don’t, you’ll do the things. Why, the prettiest studio I ever saw was furnished with old boxes covered with bark and lichens, and cushioned with burlap. The woodwork was cheap pine stained dark, the walls were rough, and there was a fireplace built from common cobblestones. When the tea-kettle began to sing on the hearth, and my friend got out her little cheap teacups from the ten-cent store, I thought it was the prettiest place I ever saw, and all because she had put herself into it and not money, and made everything harmonize. You’ll do it yet. I can see it in your eyes. But here we are at last in the city, and aren’t you going to give me your address? Here’s mine on this card, and I don’t want to lose you now I’ve found you. I want you to come and see me sometime if possible, and if I get back to this city again sometime,—I’m only passing through now, and meeting my son to go on to Washington with him in the morning,—but if I get back this way sometime soon I want to look you up if I may, and see if I didn’t prophesy truly, my dear little Interior Decorator.”

This was the kind of admiration Cornelia was used to, and she glowed with pleasure under it, her cheeks looking very pretty against the edge of brown fur on her coat-collar. She hastily scribbled the new address on one of her cards and handed it out with a dubious look, almost as if she would like to recall it.

“I haven’t an idea what kind of a place it will be,” she said apologetically. “Father seemed to think I wouldn’t like it at all. Perhaps it won’t be a place I would be proud to have you see me in.”

“I’m sure you’ll grace the place, however humble it is,” said the lady with a soft touch of her jewelled hand on Cornelia’s. And just then the train slid into the station and came to a halt. Almost immediately a tall young man strode down the aisle and stood beside the seat. It seemed a miracle how he could have arrived so soon, before the passengers had gathered their bundles ready to get out.

“Mother!” he said eagerly, lifting his hat with the grace and ease of a young man well versed in the usages of the best society. And then he stooped and kissed her. Cornelia forgot herself in her admiration of the little scene. It was so beautiful to see a mother and son like this. She sighed wistfully. If only Carey could be like that with mother! What an unusual young man this one seemed to be! He didn’t look like a mollycoddle, either. He treated his mother like a beloved comrade. Cornelia sat still watching, and then the mother turned and introduced her.

“Arthur, I want you to meet Miss Copley. She has made part of the way quite pleasant and interesting for me.”

Then Cornelia was favored with a quick, searching glance accompanied by a smile which was first cordial for his mother’s sake, and then grew more so with his own approval as he studied her. The girls his mother picked were apt to be satisfactory. She could see he was accepting her at the place where his mother left off. A moment more, and he was carrying her suitcase in one hand and his mother’s in the other, while she, walking with the lady, wondered at herself, and wished that fate were not just about to whirl her away from these most interesting people.

Then she caught a glimpse of her father at the train gate, with his old derby pulled down far over his forehead as if it were getting too big, and his shabby coat-collar turned up about his sunken cheeks. How worn and tired he looked! yes, and old and thin. She hadn’t remembered that his shoulders stooped so, or that his hair was so gray. Had all that happened in two years? And that must be Louise waving her handkerchief so violently just in front of him. Was that Harry in that old red baseball sweater with a smudged white letter on his breast, and ragged wrists? He was chewing gum, too! Oh, if these new acquaintances would only get out of the way! It would be so dreadful to have to meet and explain and introduce! She forgot that she had a most speaking face, and that her feelings were quite open to the eyes of her new friends, until she suddenly looked up and found the young man’s eyes upon her interestedly, and then the pink color flew over her whole face in confusion.

“Please excuse me,” she said, reaching out for her suitcase. “I see my father,” and without further formalities she fairly flew down the remainder of the platform and smothered herself in the bosom of her family, anxious only to get them off to one side and away from observation.

“She’s a lovely girl,” said the lady wistfully. “She wants to be an interior decorator, and make a name and fame for herself, but instead she’s got to go home from college and keep house for that rabble. Still, I think she’ll make good. She has a good face and sweet, true eyes. Sometime we’ll go and see her and find out.”

“M’m!” said the son, watching Cornelia escape from a choking embrace from her younger brother and sister. “I should think that might be interesting,” and he walked quite around a group of chattering people greeting some friends in order that he might watch her the longer. But when Cornelia at last straightened her hat, and looked furtively about her, the mother and son had passed out of sight, and she drew a deep sigh of thanksgiving and followed her father and the children downstairs to the trolley. They seemed delightful people, and under other circumstances she might have heartily enjoyed their company; but if she had hard things to face she didn’t want an audience while she faced them. Her father might be shabby and old; but he was her father, and she wasn’t going to have him laughed at by anybody, even if he didn’t always see things as she thought he ought to see them.

CHAPTER II

It was a long ride, and the trolley was chilly. Cornelia tried to keep from shivering and smile at everything Louise and Harry told her, but somehow things had got on her nerves. She had broken out into a perspiration with all the excitement at the station, and now felt cold and miserable. Her eyeballs ached with the frequent tears that had slipped their salt way that afternoon; and her head was heavy, and heavier her heart.

Across the way sat her father, looking grayer and more worn in the garish light of the trolley. His hair straggled and needed cutting, and his cheeks were quite hollow. He gave a hollow cough now and then, and his eyes looked like haunted spirits; but he smiled contentedly across to her whenever he caught her glance. She knew he meant that she should feel how glad he was to get her back. She began to feel very mean in her heart that she could not echo his gladness. She knew she ought to, but somehow visions of what she had left behind, probably forever, got between her and her duty, and pulled down the corners of her mouth in a disheartening droop that made her smiles a formal thing, though she tried, she really did try, to be what this worn old father evidently expected her to be, a model daughter, glad to get home and sacrifice everything in life for them all.

These thoughts made her responses to the children only half-hearted. Harry was trying to tell her how the old dog had died and they had only the little pup left, but it was so game it could beat any cat on the street in a fight already, and almost any dog.

Louise chimed in with a tale about a play in school that she had to be in if Nellie would only help her get up a costume out of old things. But gradually the talk died down, and Louise sat looking thoughtfully across at her father’s tired face, while Harry frowned and puckered his lips in a contemplative attitude, shifting his gum only now and then enough to keep it going and fixing his eyes very wide and blue in deep melancholy upon the toe of his father’s worn shoe. Something was fast going wrong with the spirits of the children, and Cornelia was so engrossed in herself and her own bitter disappointment that she hadn’t even noticed it.

In the midst of the blueness the car stopped, and Mr. Copley rose stiffly with an apologetic smile toward his elder daughter.

“Well, this is about where we get off, Nellie,” he said half wistfully, as if he had done his brave best and it was now up to her.

Something in his tone brought Cornelia keenly to her senses. She stumbled off the car, and looked around her breathlessly, while the car rumbled on up a strange street with scattering houses, wide open spaces reminding one of community baseball diamonds, and furtive heaps of tin cans and ashes. The sky was wide and open, with brilliant stars gleaming gaudily against the night, and a brazen moon that didn’t seem to understand how glaringly every defect in the locality stood out; but that only made the place seem more strange and barren to the girl. She had not known what she expected, but certainly not this. The houses about her were low and small, some of them of red brick made all alike, with faded greenish-blue shutters, and a front door at one side opening on a front yard of a few feet in dimensions, with a picket fence about it, or sometimes none at all. The house her father was leading her to was a bit taller than the rest, covered with clapboards weather-beaten and stained, guiltless of paint, as could be seen even at night, high and narrow, with gingerbread-work in the gable and not even a porch to grace its poor bare face, only two steps and a plain wooden door.

Cornelia gasped, and hurried in to shut herself and her misery away from the world. Was this what they had come to? No wonder her mother had given out! No wonder her father—— But then her father—how could he have let them come to a place like this? It was terrible!

Inside, at the end of the long, narrow hall the light from the dining-room shone cheerfully from a clean kerosene-lamp guiltless of shade, flaring across a red and white tablecloth.

“We haven’t done a thing to the parlor yet,” said the father sadly, throwing open a door at his right as Cornelia followed him. “Your mother hadn’t the strength!” he sighed deeply. “But then,” he added more cheerfully, “what are parlors when we are all alive and getting well?”

Cornelia cast a wondering look at him. She had not known her father thought so much of her mother. There was a half-glorified look on his face that made her think of a boy in love. It was queer to think it, but of course her mother and father had been young lovers once. Cornelia, her thoughts temporarily turned from her own brooding, followed into the desolate dining-room, and her heart sank. This was home! This was what she had come back to after all her dreams of a career and all her pride over an artistic temperament!

There was a place set for her at one end of the red-clothed table, and a plaintive little supper drying up on the stove in the kitchen; but Cornelia was not hungry. She made pretence of nibbling at the single little burned lamb-chop and a heavy soda-biscuit. If she had known how the children had gone without meat to buy that lamb-chop, and how hard Louise had worked to make these biscuits and the apple-sauce that accompanied them, she might have been more appreciative; but as it was she was feeling very miserable indeed, and had no time from her own self-pitying thoughts to notice them at all.

The dining-room was a dreary place. An old sofa that had done noble duty in the family when Cornelia was a baby lounged comfortably at one side, a catch-all for overcoats, caps, newspapers, bundles, mending, anything that happened along. Three of the dining-room chairs were more or less gone or emaciated in their seats. The cat was curled up comfortably in the old wooden rocker that had always gone by the name of “Father’s rocker,” and wore an ancient patchwork cushion. The floor was partly covered by a soiled and worn Axminster rug whose roses blushed redly still behind wood-colored scrolls on an indiscriminate background that no one would ever suspect of having been pearl-gray once upon a time. The wall-paper was an ugly dirty dark-red, with tarnished gold designs, torn in places and hanging down, greasy and marred where chairs had rubbed against it and heads had apparently leaned. It certainly was not a charming interior. She curled her lip slightly as she took it all in. This her home! And she a born artist and interior decorator!

Her silence and lack of enthusiasm dampened the spirits of the children, who had looked to her coming to brighten the dreary aspect of things. They began to sit around silently and watch her, their keen young eyes presently searching out her thoughts, following her gaze from wall-paper to curtainless window, from broken chair to sagging couch.

“We haven’t been able to get very much to rights,” sighed Louise in a suddenly grown-up, responsible tone, wrinkling her pink young brow into lines of care. “I wanted to put up some curtains before you got here, but I couldn’t find them. Father wouldn’t let me open the boxes till Carey came home to help. He said there was enough around for me to tend to, all alone, now.”

“Of course,” assented the elder sister briefly and not at all sympathetically. In her heart she was thinking that curtains wouldn’t make any difference. What was the use of trying to do anything, anyway? Suppose the beautiful stranger who had been so sure she would make her home lovely could see her now. What would she think? She drew a deep sigh.

“I guess maybe I better go to bed,” said Louise suddenly, blinking to hide a tendency to tears. It was somehow all so different from what she had expected. She had thought it would be almost like having mother back, and it wasn’t at all. Cornelia seemed strange and difficult.

“Yes,” said the father, coming up from the cellar, where he had been putting the erratic furnace to bed for the night; “you and Harry better get right up to bed. You have to get up so early in the morning.”

“Perhaps you’d like to come, too,” said Louise, turning to Cornelia with one more attempt at hospitality. “You know you have to sleep with me; that is I sleep with you.” She smiled apologetically. “There isn’t any other room, you know,” she explained as she saw the look of dismay on Cornelia’s face. “I wanted to fix up the linen-closet for me, but father couldn’t find another cot yet. Harry sleeps on one cot up in a little skylight place in the third story that was only meant for a ladder to go up to the roof. Carey has the only real room on the third floor, and there aren’t but two on the second besides the little speck of a bathroom and the linen-closet.”

A sudden realization of the trouble in the little sister’s eyes and voice brought Cornelia somewhat to her senses.

“That’s all right, chicken,” she said, pinching the little girl’s cheek playfully. “We won’t fight, I guess. I’m quite used to a roommate, you know.”

Louise’s face bloomed into smiles of hopefulness.

“Oh, that will be nice,” she sighed. “Are you coming to bed now?”

“You run along, Louise,” put in her father. “I guess Nellie and I will have a bit of a talk before she comes up. She’ll want to know all about mother, you know.”

The two children withdrew, and Cornelia tried to forget herself once more and bring her reluctant thoughts to her immediate future and the task that was before her.

“What is the matter with mother?” she asked suddenly, her thoughts still half impatient over the interruption to her career. It was time she understood more definitely just what had come in to stop her at this important time of her life. She wished that mother herself had written; mother never made so much of things, although of course she didn’t want to hurt her father by saying so.

“Why, she was all run down,” said Mr. Copley, a shade of deep sadness coming over his gray face. “You see she had been scrimping herself for a long time, saving, that the rest of us might have more. We didn’t know it, of course, or we would have stopped it.” His voice was shamed and sorrowful. “We found she hadn’t been eating any meat,”—his voice shook like an old man’s,—“just to—save—more for the rest of us.”

Cornelia looked up with a curl on her lip and a flash in her eyes; but there was something in her father’s broken look that held back the words of blame that had almost sprung to her lips, and he went on with his tale in a tone like a confession, as if the burden of it were all on him, and were a cloak of shame that he must wear. It was as if he wanted to tell it all at its worst.

“She didn’t tell us, either, when she began to feel bad. She must have been running down for the last three years; in fact, ever since you went away. Though she never let on. When Molly had to go home to her folks, your mother decided not to try to keep a servant. She said she could get along better with sending out the washing, and servants were a scarce article, and cost a lot. I didn’t want her to; but you know how your mother always was, and I had kind of got used to letting her have her own way, especially as about that time I had all I could do night and day at the office to try to prevent what I saw was coming for the business. She worked too hard. I shall never forgive myself!” He suddenly buried his face in his hands, and groaned.

It was awful to Cornelia. She wanted to run and fling her arms about his neck and comfort him; yet she couldn’t help blaming him. Was he so weak? Why hadn’t he been more careful of the business, and not let things get into such a mess? A man oughtn’t to be weak. But the sight of his trouble touched her strangely. How thin and gray his hair looked! It struck her again that he looked aged since she had seen him last. It gave her the effect of a cold douche in her face.

“Don’t father!” she said, her voice full of suppressed pain, and a glint of tenderness.

“Well, I know I oughtn’t to trouble you this way, daughter,” he said, looking up with a deprecatory smile; “but somehow it comes over me how much she suffered in silence before we found it out, and then I can’t stand it, especially when I think what she was when I married her, so fresh-faced and pretty with brown hair and eyes just like yours. You make me think a lot of her, daughter. Well, it’s all over, thank the Lord,” he went on with a sigh, “and she’s on the mend again. You don’t know what it was to me the day of the operation.”

“Operation!” The word caught in Cornelia’s throat, and a chill of horror crept over her. “Why, you never told me there was an operation!”

“I know,” her father said apologetically. “That was mother, too! she wouldn’t have you troubled. She said it was just your examination time, and it would mean a great deal to you to get your marks; and it would only be a time of anxiety to you, and she was so sure she would come out all right. She was wonderfully brave, your mother was. And she hoped so much she’d be able to get up and around, and not have to bring you home till your course was over. We meant to manage it somehow; but you see we didn’t know how serious it was, and how she would have to go away and stay a long time till she was strong.”

Cornelia’s eyes were filled with tears now. She had forgotten her own disappointments and the way she had been blaming her father, and was filled with remorse for the little mother who had suffered and thought of her to the last. She got up quickly, and went over to gather the bowed head of her father into her unaccustomed arms and try somehow to be daughterly. It was strange because she had been away so long and had got out of the way of little endearments, but she managed it so that the big man was comforted and smiled at her, and told her again and again how good it was to have her back, almost as good as having her mother. Then he stroked her hair, looked into her wise young eyes, and called her his little Nellie-girl, the way she could remember his doing before she went away to school.

When Cornelia went upstairs at last with the kerosene-lamp held high above her head so that she would not stumble up the steep, winding staircase, she had almost forgotten herself and her ambitions, and was filled with a desire to comfort her father.

She dropped into her place beside the sleeping sister with a martyr-like quiet, and failed to notice the discouraged droop of the little huddled figure, and the tear-stained cheek that was turned toward the dingy wall. The dreariness of the room and the close quarters had brought depression upon her spirits once more, and she lay a long time filled with self-pity, and wondering how in the world she was ever to endure it all.

CHAPTER III

In the dimness of the early morning Louise Copley awoke with a sigh to consciousness, and softly slid her hand down to the floor under the bed, where she had hidden the old alarm-clock. With a sense that her elder sister was still company she had not turned on the alarm as usual, and now with clock-like regularity and a sense of responsibility far beyond her years she had wakened at a quarter to six as promptly as if the whir of the alarm had sounded underneath her pillow.

She rubbed her eyes open, and through the half-lifted fringes took a glance. Yes it was time to get up. With one more lingering rub at her sleepy young eyes she put the clock back under the bed out of the way, and stole quietly over the footboard, watching furtively her sleeping sister. How pretty Nellie was even in the early gray light of morning, with all that wavy mane of hair sweeping over the pillow, and her long lashes lying on the pink curve of her cheek! Louise wondered incredulously whether she would be half as pretty as that when she was as old as her sister.

It was nice to have a big sister at home, but now she was here Louise wondered in a mature little housewifely way what in the world they were going to do with her. She didn’t look at all fit for cooking and things like that, and Louise sighed wearily as she struggled with the buttons, and thought of the day before her, and the endless weeks that must go by before they could hope for the return of the dear mother who had made even poverty sweet and cheerful. And there was that matter of a spring hat, and a costume to wear at the school entertainment. She stole another glance at the lovely sleeping sister, and decided it would not do to bother her with little trifles like that. She would have to manage them somehow herself. Then, with the last button conquered, and a hasty tying back of her yellow curls with a much-worn ribbon, she tiptoed responsibly from the room, taking care to shut the latch securely and silently behind her.

She sped downstairs, and went capably at the kitchen stove, coaxing it into brightness and glancing fearfully at the kitchen clock. It was six o’clock, and she could hear her father stirring about in his room. He would be down soon to look after the furnace; and then she must have breakfast on the table at once, for he must catch the six-fifty-five car. The usual morning frenzy of rush seized her, and she flew from dining-room to pantry, to the refrigerator for butter, out to the front door for the bottle of milk that would be there, back to the pantry cutting bread, and back to the stove to turn the bacon and be sure it did not burn. It was a mad race, and sometimes she felt like crying by the time she sat down to the table to pour her father’s coffee, which somehow, try as she would, just would not look nor taste like mother’s. She was almost relieved that her sister had given no sign of awakening yet; for she had not had time to make the breakfast table look nice, and it was so kind of exciting to try to eat in a hurry and have “sort of company” to think about at the same time.

The father came downstairs peering into the dining-room anxiously, with an apology on his lips for his eldest child.

“That’s right, Louie; I’m glad you let her sleep. She looked all wearied out last night with her long journey, and then I guess it’s been a kind of a shock to her, too.”

“I guess it has,” said the little girl comfortably, and passed him his cup of coffee and the bread-plate. They both had a sense of relief that Cornelia was not there and that there was a legitimate reason for not blaming her for her absence. Neither had yet been willing to admit to their loyal selves that Cornelia’s attitude of apathy to the family strait had been disappointing. They kept hoping against hope.

Mr. Copley finished his coffee hurriedly, and looked at his watch.

“Better let her sleep as long as she will,” he said. “She’ll likely be awake before you need to go to school; and, if she isn’t, you can leave a note telling her where to find things. Where’s Harry? Isn’t he up?”

“Oh, yes, he went to the grocery for the soup-bone he forgot to get last night. I was going to put it on cooking before I left. I thought maybe she wouldn’t know to——”

“That’s right! That’s right! You’re a good little girl, Louie. Your sister’ll appreciate that. Make Harry eat a good breakfast when he gets back. It isn’t good to go out on an empty stomach; and we must all keep well, and not worry mother, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” sighed the little girl with a responsible look; “I made him take a piece with him, and I’m saving something hot for him when he comes back. He’ll help me with the dishes, he said. We’ll make out all right. Don’t you worry, father, dear.”

The father with a tender father-and-mother-both smile came around, and kissed her white forehead where the soft baby-gold hair parted, and then hurried away to his car, thankful for the mother’s look in his youngest girl’s face; wondering whether they had chased it forever away from the eldest girl’s face by sending her too young to college.

It was to the soft clatter of pots and pans somewhere in the near distance that Cornelia finally awakened with a sense of terrible depression and a belated idea that she ought to be doing something for the family comfort. She arose hastily, and dressed, with a growing distaste for the new day and what was before her. Even the view from the grimy little bedroom window was discouraging. It was a gray day, and one could see there were intentions of rain in the mussy clouds that hurled themselves across the distant roof-tops. The window looked out into the back yard, a small enclosure with a fence needing paint, and dishearteningly full of rusty tin cans and old, weather-stained newspapers and rubbish. Beyond the narrow dirty alley were rows of other similar back yards, with now and then a fluttering dishcloth hanging on a string on a back porch, and plenty of heaped-up ash cans everywhere you looked. They were the back doors of houses of the poorer class, most of them two-story and old. Farther on there was an excellent view of a large and prosperous dump-heap in a wide, cavernous lot that looked as if it had suffered from earthquake sometime in the dim past and lost its bottom, so capacious it seemed as its precipitous sides sloped down, liberally coated with “dump.” Cornelia gave a slight shiver of horror, and turned from the window. To think of having to look at a view like that all summer. A vision of the cool, leafy camp where she had spent two weeks the summer before floated tantalizingly before her sad eyes as she slowly went downstairs.

It was a plaintive little voice that arrested her attention and her progress half-way down, a sweet, tired young voice that went to her heart, coming from the open kitchen door and carrying straight through the open dining-room and through the hall up to her:

“I guess she doesn’t realize how much we needed her,” it said sadly; “and I guess she’s pretty disappointed at the house and everything. It’s pretty much of a change from college, of course.”

Then a young, indignant high tenor growl:

“H’m! What does she think she is, anyway? Some queen? I guess the house has been good enough for us. How does she think we’ve stood being poor all these years just to keep her in college? I’d like to know. This house isn’t so much worse’n the last one we were in. It’s a peach beside some we might have had to take if these folks hadn’t been just moving out now. What does she want to do anyhow? Isn’t her family good enough for her, or what? If I ever have any children, I shan’t send ’em to college, I know that. It spoils ’em. And I don’t guess I’ll ever go myself. What’s her little old idea, anyway? Who crowned her?”

“Why, she wants to be an interior decorator,” said the little sister, slowly hanging up the dishcloth. “I guess it’s all right, and she’d make money and all; only we just couldn’t help her out till she got through her course.”

“Interior decorator!” scornfully said the boy. “I’d be satisfied if she’d decorate my interior a little. I’d like some of mother’s waffles, wouldn’t you? And some hash and johnny-cake. Gee! Well, I guess we better get a hustle on, or we’ll be called down for tardiness. You gotta wake her up before you go?”

“Father said not to; I’m just going to leave a note. It’s all written there on the dining-room table. You put some coal on the range, and I’ll get my hat and coat”; and the little sister moved quickly toward the hall.

Cornelia in sudden panic turned silently, and sped back to her room, closing the door and listening with wildly beating heart till her young brother and sister went out the door and closed it behind them. Then, obeying an impulse that she did not understand, she suddenly flung her door open, and flew to her father’s front bedroom window for a sight of them as they trudged off with piles of books under their arms, two valiant young comrades, just as she and Carey used to be in years so long ago and far away that she had almost forgotten them. And how they had stabbed her, her own brother and sister, talking about her as if she were a selfish alien, who had been living on their sacrifices for a long time! What could it possibly mean? Surely they were mistaken. Children always exaggerated things, and of course the few days or perhaps weeks since their father had lost his money had seemed a long time to them, poor little souls. Of course it had been hard for them to get along even a few days without mother, and in this awful house. But—how could they have talked that way? How terrible of them! There were tears in her eyes and a pain in her heart from the words, for, after all, in spite of her self-centred abstraction she did love them all; they were hers, and of course dearer than anything else on earth. Yes, even than interior decorating, and of course it was right that she should come home and make them comfortable, only—if only!

But the old unrest was swept back by the memory of those cutting words in the young high voices. She sank down in an old armchair that stood by the window, and let the tears have their way for a minute. Somehow she felt abused by the words of the children. They had misjudged her, and it wasn’t fair! It was bad enough to have to give up everything and come home, without being misjudged and called selfish.

But presently the tears had spent themselves, and she began to wipe her eyes and look around. Her father’s room was as desolate as any other. There was no evidence of an attempt to put comfort into it. The upper part of the heavy walnut bureau, with its massive mirror that Cornelia remembered as a part of the furniture of her mother’s room since she was a baby, had not been screwed to the bureau, but was standing on the floor as if it had just moved in. The bureau-top was covered with dust, worn, mussed neckties, soiled collars, and a few old letters. Her father’s few garments were strewn about the room and the open closet door revealed some of her mother’s garments, old ones that Cornelia remembered she had had before she herself went to college.

On the unmade bed, close beside the pillow, as if it had been cherished for comfort, was one of mother’s old calico wrappers. It was lying where a cheek might conveniently rest against it. Somehow Cornelia didn’t think of that explanation of its presence there at first; but later it grew into her consciousness, and the pathetic side of it filled her with dismay. Was life like this always, or was this a special preparation for her benefit?

Somehow, as she sat there, her position as a selfish, unloving daughter became intolerable. Could it be possible that the children had spoken truly and that the family had been in straightened circumstances for a longer time than just a few weeks, on account of keeping her in college? The color burned in her cheeks, and her eyes grew heavy with shame. How shabby everything looked! She didn’t remember it that way. Her home had always seemed a comfortable one as she looked back upon it. Somehow she could not understand. But the one thought that burned into her soul was that they had somehow felt her lacking, ungrateful.

Suddenly she was stung into action. They should see that she was no selfish, idle member of the family group. At least, she could be as brave as they were. She would go to work and make a difference in things before they came home. She would show them!

She flew to the tumbled bed, and began to straighten the rumpled sheets and plump up the pillows. In a trice she had it smoothly made. But there was no white spread to put over it, and there were rolls of dust under the bed and in the corners. The floor had not even a rug to cover its bareness. Worn shoes and soiled socks trailed about here and there, and several old garments hung on bedposts, drifted from chairs, and even lay on the floor. Cornelia went hastily about, gathering them up, sorting out the laundry, setting the shoes in an even row in the closet, straightening the bureau, and stuffing things into the already overflowing drawers, promising them an early clearing out as soon as she had the rest of the work in hand. Poor father! of course he was not used to keeping things in order. How a woman was missed in a house! She hadn’t realized it before. The whole house looked as if the furniture had just been dumped in with no attempt to set things right, as her father had said. She must get the broom, and begin.

She hurried out into the hall, and a glimpse of the narrow stairway winding above her drew her to investigate. And then a sudden thought. Carey. Where was Carey? Hadn’t he come home at all last night? She had no recollection of hearing him, and yet she might have fallen asleep earlier than she thought. She mounted the stairs, and stood aghast before the desolation there.

The little closet Louise had spoken of with its skylight, and its meagre cot of twisted bedclothes, its chair with a medley of Harry’s clothes, and its floor strewn with a varied collection, was dreary enough; but there was yet some semblance of attempt at order. The muddy shoes stood in a row; some garments were in piles, and some hung on nails as if there had been an attempt at good housekeeping by the young owner. There was even a colored picture of a baseball favorite, and a diagram of a famous game. One could feel that the young occupant had taken possession with some sense of ownership in the place. But the front room was like a desert of destruction whereon lay bleaching the bones of a former life as if swept there by a whirlwind.

The headboard and footboard of the iron bedstead stood against the wall together like a corpse cast aside and unburied. On the floor in the very middle of the room lay the springs, and upon it the worn and soiled mattress, hardly recognizable by that name now because of the marks of heavy, muddy shoes, as if it had been not only slept upon but walked over with shoes straight from the contact of the street in bad weather. Sheets there were none, and the pillow soiled and with a hole burnt in one corner of its ticking lay guiltless of a pillow-case, with a beaten, sodden impression of a head in its centre. There was a snarl of soiled blanket and torn patchwork quilt across the foot, tossed to one side; and all about this excuse for a bed was strewn the most heterogeneous mass of objects that Cornelia had ever seen collected. Clothes soiled and just from the laundry, all in one mass, neckties tangled among books and letters, cheap magazines and parts of automobiles, a silk hat and a white evening vest keeping company with a pair of greasy overalls and two big iron wrenches; and over everything cigarette-stumps.

The desolation was complete. The bureau had turned its back to the scene in despair, and was face to the wall, as it had been placed by the movers. It was then and not till then that Cornelia understood how recent had been the moving, and how utter the rout of the poor, patient mother, whose wonderful housekeeping had always been the boast of the neighborhood where they had lived, and whose fastidiousness had been almost an obsession.

Cornelia stood in the door, and gasped in horror as her eyes travelled from one corner of the room to another and back again, and her quick mind read the story of her brother’s life and one deep cause of her dear mother’s breakdown. She remembered her father’s words about Carey, and how he hoped she would be able to help him; and then her memory went back to the days when she and Carey had been inseparable. She saw the bright, eager face of her brother only two years younger than herself, always merry, with a jest on his lips and a twinkle in his eyes, but a kind heart and a willingness always to serve. Had Carey in three short years fallen to this? Because there was no excuse for an able-bodied young man to live in a mess like this. No young man with a mite of self-respect would do it. And Carey knew better. Carey had been brought up to take care of himself and his things. Nobody could mend a bit of furniture, or fix the plumbing, or sweep a room, or even wash out a blanket for mother, better than Carey when he was only fifteen. And for Carey as she knew him to be willing to lie down for at least more than one night in a room like this and go off in the morning leaving it this way, was simply unthinkable. How Carey must have changed to have come to this! As her eyes roved about the room, she began to have an insight into what must be the trouble. Self-indulgence of a violent type must have got hold of him. Look at the hundreds of cigarette-stumps, ashes everywhere. The only saving thing was the touch of machinery in the otherwise hopeless mass; and that, too, meant only that he was crazy about automobiles, and likely fussed with them now and then to repair them so that he would have opportunity to ride as much as he liked. And Carey—where was Carey now?

She turned sadly away from the room, and shut the door. It was a work of time to think of getting that mess straightened out into any sort of order, and it made her heart-sick and hopeless. She must look farther and learn the whole story before she began to do anything.

She stumbled blindly downstairs, only half glancing into the messy bathroom where soap and toothbrushes got standing room indiscriminately where they could; took a quick look into the small enclosure that Louise had described as a “linen-closet,” probably on account of a row of dirty-looking shelves at one end of the apartment; looked hesitatingly toward the door of her own room, wondering whether to stop there long enough to make the bed and tidy up, but shook her head and went on downstairs. She must know the whole thing before she attempted to do anything.

The stairs ascended at the back of the hall, with a cloak-closet under them now stuffed with old coats and hats belonging to the whole family. Opposite this closet the dining-room door opened. All the space in front was devoted to the large front room known as the “parlor.” Cornelia flung the door open wide, and stepped in. The blinds were closed, letting in only a slant ray of light from a broken slat over the desolation of half-unpacked boxes and barrels that prevailed. Evidently the children had mauled everything over in search of certain articles they needed, and had not put back or put away anything. Pictures and dishes and clothing lay about miscellaneously in a confused heap, and a single step into the room was liable to do damage, for one might step into a china meat-platter under an eider-down quilt, or knock over a cut-glass pitcher in the dark. Cornelia stopped, and rescued several of her mother’s best dishes from a row about the first barrel by the door, transferring them to the hall-rack before she dared go in to look around.

The piano was still encased in burlap, standing with its keyboard to the wall, an emblem of the family’s desolation. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, Cornelia gradually began to identify various familiar objects. There were the old sofa and upholstered chairs that used to be in the nursery when Louise and Harry were mere babies. The springs were sagging and the tapestry faded.

She searched in vain for the better suite of furniture that had been bought for the living room before she went to college. Where was it? It hadn’t been in the dining-room the night before, she was sure; and of course it couldn’t be in the kitchen. Could there be a shed at the back somewhere, with more things that were not as yet unpacked? With a growing fear she slipped behind some barrels, and tried to find the big bookcase with the glass doors, and the mahogany tables that mother had been so proud of because they had belonged to her great-grandmother, and the claw-legged desk with the cabinet on the top. Not one of them was to be found.

A horrible suspicion was dawning in her mind. She waited only to turn back the corners of several rolls of carpet and rugs, and make sure the Oriental rugs were missing, before she fled in a panic to the back of the house.

Through the bare little kitchen she passed without even noticing how hard the children had worked to clear it up. Perhaps she would not have called it cleared up, her standard being on an entirely different scale from theirs. Yes, there was a door at the farther side. She flung it open, and found the hoped-for shed, but no furniture. Its meagre space was choked with tubs and an old washing-machine, broken boxes and barrel-staves, a marble table-top broken in two, and a rusty wash-boiler. With a shiver of conviction she stood and stared at them, and then slammed the door shut, and, flinging herself into a kitchen chair, burst into tears.

She had not wept like that since she was a capable, controlled little girl; but the tears somehow cleared the cobwebs from her eyes and heart. She knew now that those beautiful things of her mother’s were gone, and her strong suspicions were that she was the cause of it all. Some one else was enjoying them so that the money they brought could be used to keep her in college! And she had been blaming her father for not having managed somehow to let her stay longer! All these months, or perhaps years for aught she knew, he had been straining and striving to keep her from knowing how hard he and her dear mother were saving and scrimping to make her happy and give her the education she wanted; and she selfish, unloving girl that she was, had been painting, drawing, studying, directing class plays, making fudge, playing hockey, reading delightful books, attending wonderful lectures and concerts, studying beautiful pictures, and all the time growing farther and farther away from the dear people who were giving their lives—yes, literally giving their lives, for they couldn’t have had much enjoyment in living at this rate—to make it all possible for her!

Oh! she saw it all clearly enough now, and she hated herself for it. She began to go back over last night and how she had met them. She visualized their faces as they stood at the gate eagerly awaiting her; and she, little college snob that she was, was ashamed to greet them eagerly because she was with a fine lady and her probably snobbish son. Her suddenly awakened instinct recalled the disappointed look on the tired father’s face and the sudden dulling of the merry twinkles of gladness in the children’s eyes. Oh! she could see it all now, and each new memory and conviction brought a stab of pain to her heart. Then, as if the old walls of the house took up the accusation against her, she began to hear over again the plaintive voices of Louise and Harry as they wiped the dishes and talked her over. It was all too plain that she had been weighed in the balances and found wanting. Something in the pitiful wistfulness of Harry’s voice as he had made that quick turn about interior decoration roused her at last to the present and her immediate duty. It was no use whatever to sit here and cry about it when such a mountain of work awaited her. The lady on the train had been right when she told her there would be plenty of chance for her talents. She had not dreamed of any such desolation as this, of course; but it was true that the opportunity, if one could look on it as an opportunity, was great, and she would see what she could do. At least things could be clean and tidy. And there should be waffles! That was a settled thing, waffles for the first meal. And she arose and looked about her with the spirit of victory in her eyes and in the firm, sweet line of her quivering lips.

What time was it, and what ought she to do first? She stepped to the dining-room door to consult the clock which she could hear ticking noisily from the mantel, and her eye caught her sister’s note written large across the corner of a paper bag.

“Dear Nellie, I had to go to school. I’ll get back as soon after four as I can. You can heet the fride potatoes, and there are some eggs.

Louie.”

Suddenly the tears blurred into her eyes at thought of the little disappointed sister yet taking care for her in her absence. Dear little Louie! How hard it must have been for her! And she remembered the sigh she had heard from the kitchen a little while ago. Well, she was thankful she had been awakened right away and not allowed to go on in her selfish indifference. She glanced at the clock. It was a quarter to nine. She had lost a lot of time mooning over her own troubles. She had but seven hours in which to work wonders before any one returned. She must go to work at once.

CHAPTER IV

A hasty survey of the larder showed a scant supply of materials. There were flour and sugar and half a basket of potatoes. Some cans of tomatoes and corn, a paper bag of dried beans, another of rice, two eggs in a basin, and a dish of discouraged-looking fried potatoes with burnt edges completed the count. A small bit of butter on a plate and the end of a baker’s loaf of bread had evidently been left on the dining-room table for her. There were a good many things needed from the store, and she began to write them down on the other side of her sister’s note. A further investigation revealed half a bottle of milk that had soured. Cornelia’s face brightened. That would make a wonderful gingerbread, and she wrote down “Molasses, soda, brown sugar, baking-powder,” on her list.

It wasn’t as if Cornelia hadn’t spent the first sixteen years of her life at home with her mother, for she knew how to cook and manage quite well before she went away to school; only of course she hadn’t done a thing at it since she left home, and like most girls she thought she hated the very idea of kitchen work.

“Now, where do they buy things?” she wondered aloud to the clock as if it were alive. “I shall have to find out. I suppose if I take a basket and go far enough, I shall come to a store. If I don’t I can ask somebody.”

She ran upstairs, and got her hat and coat, and patted her pocketbook happily. At least she was not penniless, and did not have to wait until her father came home for what she wanted to get; for she had almost all of the last money her mother had sent before her illness. It had been sent for new spring clothes, and Cornelia had been so busy she had not had time to buy them. It sent a glad thrill through her heart now, strangely mingled with a pang at the things that she had planned and that now would not be hers. Yet, after all, the pang did not last; for already her mind was taken up with the new interests and needs of home, and she was genuinely glad that she had the money still unspent.

Down the dull little street she sped, thinking of all she had to do in the house before the family came home, trying not to feel the desolation of the night before as she passed the little commonplace houses and saw what kind of a neighborhood she had come to live in, trying not to realize that almost every house showed neglect or poverty of some kind. Well, what of it? If she did live in a neighborhood that was utterly uncongenial, she could at least make their little home more comfortable. She knew she could. She could feel the ability for it tingling to her very finger-tips, and she smiled as she hurried on to the next corner, where the gleam of a trolley track gave hint of a possible business street. She paused at the corner and looked each way, a pretty picture of girlhood, balancing daintily on her neat little feet and looking quite out of place in that neighborhood. Some of her new neighbors eyed her from behind their Nottingham lace curtains and their blue paper shades, and wondered unsympathetically where she came from and how she had strayed there, and a young matron in a dirty silver lace boudoir-cap with fluttering pink and blue ribbons came out with her market basket, and gave a cool, calculating stare, so far in another world that she did not mind being caught at it.

The boudoir-cap was almost too much for Cornelia, bobbing about the fat, red face of the frowsy woman; but the market basket gave her a hint, and she gracefully fell in behind her fellow shopper, and presently arrived at a market.

About this time Mrs. Knowlton and her son sat in the hotel dining-room downtown, eating their breakfast. A telegram had just been laid beside the son’s plate, and he looked up from reading it with a troubled brow.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to upset our plans again,” he said. “I’m awfully sorry, mother; but Brown is coming on from Boston expecting to meet me at noon; and I guess there’s nothing to do but wait until the two o’clock train. Shall you mind very much?”

“Not at all,” said his mother, smiling. “Why should I mind? I came on to be with you. Does it matter whether I’m in Philadelphia or Washington?”

“Is there anything you would like to do this morning? Any shopping? Or would you like to drive about a bit?”

She shook her head.

“I can shop at home. I came here to be with you.”

“Then let’s drive,” he decided with a loving smile. “Where would you like to go? Anything you want to see?”

“No—or wait. Yes, there is. I’ve a fancy I’d like to drive past the house where that little girl I met on the train lives. I’d like to see exactly what she’s up against with her firm little chin and her clear, wise eyes and her artistic ways.”

“At it again, aren’t you, mother? Always falling in love and chasing after your object. You’re worse than a young man in his teens”; and he smiled understandingly. “All right; we’ll hunt her up, mother; only we shan’t have much time to stop, for I have to be here sharp at twelve thirty. Do you know where she lives?”

“Yes, I have her address here,” said his mother, searching in her silver bag for the card on which Cornelia had written it. “But I don’t want to stop. It wouldn’t do. She would think me intruding.”

The young man took the address, and ordered a taxicab; and five minutes after Cornelia entered the door of her home with her arms full of bundles from market and grocery a taxicab crawled slowly by the house, and two pairs of eyes eagerly scanned the high, narrow, weather-stained building with its number over the front door the only really distinct thing about it.

“The poor child!” murmured the lady.

“Well, she sure is up against it!” growled the son, sitting back with an air of not looking, but taking it all in out of the tail end of his eye the way young men can do.

“And she wants to be an interior decorator!” said the mother, turning from her last look out the little window behind.

“She’s got some task this time, I’ll say!” answered the son. “It may show up more promisingly from the interior, but I doubt it. And you say she’s been to college? Dwight Hall, didn’t you say, where Dorothy Mayo graduated? Some come-down! It’s a hard world. Well, mother, I guess we’ve got to get back or I’ll miss my appointment;” and he gave the chauffeur directions to turn about.

More rapidly they passed this time, but the eyes of the woman took in all the details, the blank side wall where windows ought to have abounded, the shallow third story obviously with room for only one apartment, the lowly neighbors, the dirty, noisy children in the street. She thought of the girl’s lovely refined face, and sighed.

“One might, of course, do a great deal of good in such a neighborhood. It is an opportunity,” she murmured thoughtfully.

Her son looked amused.

“I imagine she’ll confine her attention to the interior of her own home if she does anything at all. I’m afraid, if I came home from college to a place like that, I’d beat it, mother mine.”

His mother looked up with a trusting smile.

“You wouldn’t, though!” she said sunnily, and added thoughtfully: “And she won’t either. She had a true face. Sometime I’m coming back to see how it came out.”

Meantime, Cornelia in the kitchen started the fire up brightly, put on the tea-kettle, and began to concoct a soft gingerbread with the aid of the nice thick sour milk. When it was in the oven, she hunted out her mother’s old worn breadraiser, greased the squeaking handle with butter, and started some bread. She remembered how everybody in the family loved mother’s home-made bread; and, if there was one thing above another in which she had excelled as a little girl in the kitchen, it was in making bread. Somehow it did not seem as though things were on a right basis until she had some bread on the way. As she crumbled the yeast cake into a sauce dish and put it a-soak, she began to hum a little tune; yet her mind was so preoccupied with what she had to do that she scarcely remembered it was the theme of the music that ran all through the college play. College life had somehow receded for the present, and in place of costumes and drapery she was considering what she ought to make and bake in order to have the pantry and refrigerator well stocked, and how soon she might with a clear conscience go upstairs and start clearing up Carey’s bedroom. She couldn’t settle rightly to anything until that awful mess was straightened out. The consciousness of the disorder up there in the third story was like a bruise that had been given her, which made itself more and more felt as the minutes passed.

When the cover was put down tight on the breadraiser, Cornelia looked about her.

“I really ought to clean this kitchen first,” she said thoughtfully, speaking aloud as if she and herself were having it out about the work. “There aren’t enough dishes unpacked for the family to eat comfortably, but there’s not room on those shelves for them if they were unpacked.”

So, with a glance at the rapidly rising gingerbread that let out a whiff of delicious aroma, she mounted on a chair, and began to clear off the top shelves of the dresser. It seemed as if there had been no system whatever in placing things. Bottles of shoe-blacking, a hammer, a box of gingersnaps, a can of putty, and several old neckties were settled in between glass sauce-dishes and the electric iron. She kept coming on little necessities. With small ceremony she swept them all down to an orderly row on the floor on the least-used side of the room, and with soap, hot water, and a scrubbing-brush went at the shelves. It didn’t take long, of course; but she put a great deal of energy into the work, and began to feel actually happy as she smelled the clean soap-suds, and beheld what a difference it made in the shabby, paintless shelves to get rid of the dirt.

“Now, we’ve at least got a spot to put things!” she announced as she took the gingerbread-tins out of the oven, and with great satisfaction noted that she had not forgotten how to make gingerbread in the interval of her college days.

The gingerbread reminded her that she had as yet had no breakfast, but she would not mar the velvet beauty of those fragrant loaves of gingerbread by cutting one now. She cut off a slice of the dry end of a loaf, and buttered it. She was surprised to find how good it tasted as she ate it going about her work, picking up what dishes on the floor belonged back on the shelves, washing and arranging them. Later, if there was time, she would unpack more dishes; but she must get up to Carey’s room. It was like leaving something dead about uncovered, to know that that room looked so above her head.

It was twelve o’clock when she at last got permission of herself to go upstairs; and she carried with her broom, mop, soap, scrubbing-brush, and plenty of hot water and old cloths. She paused at the door of the front room long enough to rummage in the bureau drawers and get out an old all-over gingham apron of her mother’s, which she donned before ascending to the third floor.

In the doorway of her brother’s room she stood appalled once more, scarcely knowing where to begin. Then, putting down her brushes and pails in the hall, she started in at the doorway, picking up the first things that came in her way. Clothes first. She sorted them out quickly, hanging the good things on the railing of the stairs, the worn and soiled ones in piles on the floor, ready for the laundry, the rag-man, and the mending-basket. When the garments were all out, she turned back; and the room seemed to be just as full and just as messy as it had been before. She began again, this time gleaning the newspapers and magazines. That made quite a hole in the floor space. Next she dragged the twisted bedclothes off the mattress, and threw them down the stairs. Somehow they must be washed or aired or duplicated before that bed would be fit to sleep in. After a thoughtful moment of looking over the banisters at them she descended, and carried them all to the little back yard, where she hung them on a short line that had been stretched from the fence to the house. They made a sorry sight, but she would have to leave them till later. The sun and air would help. There wasn’t much sun, and there was still a sharp tang of rain in the air; it had been raining at intervals all the morning. Well, if it rained on them, they certainly needed it; and anyhow it was too late in the day for her to try to wash any of them. She must do the best she could this first day.

Thus she reasoned as she frowningly surveyed the grimy blankets, her eyes lingering on a scorched place near the top of one. Suddenly her expression changed: “You’ve just got to be washed!” she said firmly, and snatching the blankets from the line, rushed in to arrange for large quantities of hot water, cleared off the stationary tubs, and dumped in the blankets, shaved up the only bar of soap she could find, and then went rummaging in the front room while the water was heating. Of course all this took strength, but she was not realizing how weary she was growing. Her mettle was up, and she was working on her nerve. It was a mercy with all she had before her that she was well and strong, and fresh from gymnasium and basketball training. It would take all her strength before she was done.

She emerged from the parlor twenty minutes later triumphant, with a number of things that she was sure would be needed. She went to work at the blankets with vigor, rubbing and pulling away at the scorched place until it was almost obliterated. Did Carey smoke in his sleep she wondered, or did he have guests that did? How dreadful that Carey had come to this, and she away at college improving herself and complacently expecting to make her mark in the world!

The blankets were cleanly steaming on the line in half an hour more, and she glanced at the clock. A whole hour had gone, and she must hasten. She sped back upstairs, and went to work again, dragging out the furniture to the hall, picking up books and magazines from the floor, till the room was stark and empty save for cigarette stumps. She surveyed them in disgust, and then assailed the room with brushes, brooms, and mop. She threw the windows wide open, and swept the walls down vigorously. Before her onslaught dust and ashes disappeared, and even the dismal wall-paper took on a brighter hue.

“It’s got to come off and be repapered or painted some pretty, soft, pastel shade,” she threatened in an undertone to herself as she surveyed the room after soap and water had done their best on floor, woodwork, and windows. She was looking at the bleary wall-paper with a troubled frown.

Of course she couldn’t do everything in a day, but Carey’s room must be clean and inviting before she would be satisfied. No wonder he stayed out late nights, or didn’t come home at all, perhaps, with such a room as that. There ought to be more windows, too. What a pity the builder had been so stingy with them! It was a dark, ugly hole; and there was no need for it, for the room occupied the whole end, and could have had openings on three sides and been delightful.

Suddenly she began to feel a great weariness stealing over her, and tears coming into her eyes. She was overwhelmed with all that was before her. She sat down on the upper stair, and looked about her discouragedly. All these things to be put somewhere! And time going so fast! Then she remembered her bread, and with an exclamation rushed down to put it into the pans.

It had risen almost to the top of the breadraiser, and with a mental apology for her forgetfulness she hastened to mold it out into loaves and put it into the greased tins. When it was neatly tucked up under a bit of old linen, she had found in the sideboard drawer, she began to prepare the meat for dinner and put it on to cook, a beautiful big pot-roast. She deftly seared it with an onion in a hot frying-pan, and put it to simmer in boiling water with the rinsings of the browned pan, being careful to recall all her mother’s early instruction on the subject. She could remember that pot-roast was always a favorite dish at home, and she herself had been longing for a taste of real home-cooked pot-roast ever since she had been away.

She fixed the fire carefully so that the meat would simmer just enough, and not boil too hard and make it tough, and gave a despairing glance at the clock. How fast the minutes flew! She ought to go back upstairs, but it was a quarter to three, and she wanted to get the table set for dinner before she left, so that the dining-room would have a pleasant look to the children when they came home. She was quite breathless and excited over their coming. She felt as if she would be almost embarrassed before them after the conversation she had overheard in the morning.

So she attacked the dining-room with broom and duster, wiped off the window-panes, and straightened the shade, swept away a mass of miscellaneous articles from the clock-shelf, cleared off the sideboard, hunted out a clean old linen cover, polished the mirror, and found a clean tablecloth. But the tablecloth had a great hole in it, and fifteen valuable minutes were wasted in finding a patch and setting it hastily in place with a needle and thread that also had to be hunted for. Then some of the dishes had to be washed before they were fit for use, as they were covered with dust from packing; and all together it was five minutes to four before Cornelia finally had that table set to her satisfaction, and could stand back for a brief minute and take it in with tired but shining eyes. Would they notice the difference and be a little glad that she had come? They had taken her for a lazy snob in the morning. Would they feel any better about it now?

And the table did look pretty. It was set as a table should be set, with dishes and glasses and silver in the correct places, and napkins neatly folded; and in the centre was a small pot of pink primroses in full bloom. For it would not have been Cornelia if there had not been a bit of decoration about somewhere, and it was like Cornelia when she went out to market, and thought of meat and bread and milk and butter and all the other necessities, to think also of that bit of brightness and refinement, and go into a small flower-shop she was passing to get this pretty primrose.

Then in panic the weary big sister brought out one loaf of gingerbread, cut several generous slices, left it on the sideboard in a welcome attitude, and fled upstairs to finish Carey’s room.

Five minutes later, as she was struggling with the bedsprings trying to bring them into conjunction with the headboard, she heard their hurrying feet, and, leaning from the window, called:

“Children! Come up here a minute, and help me.”

“I can’t,” shouted Harry with a frown; “I got a job afternoons, and I gotta hustle. I’m late a’ready, and I have to change my clo’es!” and he vanished inside the door.

“I have to go to the store for things for dinner!” reproved the younger sister stiffly, and vanished also.

Cornelia felt suddenly in her weariness like sitting down on the floor in a fit of hysterical laughter or tears. Would they never forgive her? She dropped on the floor with her head wearily back against the window and closed her eyes. She had meant to tell them about the gingerbread, but they had been in such a hurry; and somehow the spirit seemed gone out of her surprise.

Downstairs it was very still. The children had been halted at the entrance by the appetizing odor of cooking.

“Sniff!”

“Oh, gee!” said Harry. “It smells like mother was home.”

Louise stalked hurriedly to the dining-room door.

“Harry Copley, just look here! Now, what did I tell you about college girls?”

Harry came and stood entranced.

“Oh, gee!” he murmured. “Isn’t that just great? Oh, say, Lou Copley, just gaze on that sideboard! I’ll tell the world this is some day!” and he strode to the sideboard, and stopped all further speech by more than a mouthful of the fragrant ginger-cake.

The little housewife took swift steps to the kitchen door, and sniffed. She took in the row of plump bread-tins almost ready to go into the oven, the gently bubbling kettle with its fragrant steam, the shining dresser with its neat rows of dishes that she had never been able to find; and then she whirled on her astonished brother.

“Harry Copley! You answered her real mean! You go upstairs and apologize quick! And then you beat it, and change your clothes, and get to work. I’ll help her. We’re going to work together after this, she and I”; and, seizing a large slice of gingerbread in her passing, she flew up the stairs to find her sister.

CHAPTER V

They appeared in the doorway suddenly after a sound like locomotives rushing up the stairs, and surrounded her where she sat after one astonished pause at the doorway, staring around the unfamiliar apartment. They smothered her with hugs and kisses, and demanded to know how she got so much done, and what she wanted of them anyway; and they smeared her with gingerbread, and made her glad; and then as suddenly Harry disappeared with the floating explanation trailing back after him:

“Oh, gee! I gotta beat it.”

A few rustling movements in his own little closet of a room, and he was back attired in an old Boy Scout uniform, and cramming down the last bite of his gingerbread.

“Anything I can do before I go? Oh, here!” as he saw his sisters about to put the bed together. “That won’t take a second! Say, you girls don’t know how to do that. Lemme.”

And, surprising to state, he pushed them aside, and whacked the bed together in no time, slatted on the mattress with his sturdy young arms and was gone down through the dining-room and out into the street with another huge slice of gingerbread in his hands.

Cornelia straightened her tired shoulders, and looked at the subdued bed wonderingly. How handily he had done it! How strong he was! It was amazing.

Louise stood looking about with shining eyes.

“Say, Nellie, it looks lovely here, so clean and nice. I never thought it could be done, it looked so awful! I wanted to do something, and I know mother felt fierce about not fixing his room before she left; but I just couldn’t get time.”

“Of course you couldn’t, dear!” said Cornelia, suddenly realizing how wise and brave this little sister had been. “You’ve been wonderful to do anything. Why didn’t they send for me before, Louie? Tell me, how long had you been in this house before mother was taken sick?”

“Why, only a day. She fainted, you know, trying to carry that marble bureau-top upstairs, and fell down.”

“Oh! My dear!”

The two sisters stood with their arms about each other, mingling their tears for a moment; and somehow, as she stood there, Cornelia felt as if the years melted away, the college years while she had been absent, and brought her back heart and soul to her home and her loved ones again.

“But Louie, dear, what has become of the best furniture? Did they have to rent the old house furnished? I can’t find mother’s mahogany, or the parlor things, anything but the piano.”

The color rolled up into the little girl’s face, and she dropped her eyes. “Oh, no, Nellie; they went long ago,” she said, “before we even moved to the State Street house.”

“The State Street house?”

“Why, yes, father sold the Glenside house just after you went to college. You knew that, didn’t you? And then we moved to an old yellow house down farther toward the city. But it was pulled down to make room for a factory; and I was glad, for it was horrid, and a long walk to school. And then we went to a brick row down near the factory, and it was convenient for father, but—”

“Factory? Father? What do you mean, dear? Has father gone into business for himself? He was a bookkeeper at Dudley and Warner’s when I left.”

“Oh, but he lost that a long, long time ago, after he was sick so long.”

“Father sick? Louie! And I not told?”

“Why, I didn’t know they hadn’t told you. Maybe mother wouldn’t like it——”

“Tell me everything, dear. How long was father sick?”

“About a year. He lost his position, and then wasn’t able to do anything for ever so long; and, when he got out of the hospital, he hunted and hunted, and there wasn’t anything for him. He got one good job; but they said he had to dress better, and he lost that.”

Cornelia sank down on the floor again, and buried her face in her hands.

“O Louie! And I was wearing nice clothes, and doing nothing to help! Oh, why didn’t mother let me know?”

“Oh, mother kept saying she thought she could manage and it was father’s dream you should get your education,” quoted the little girl with dreamy eyes and the memory of many sacrifices sweetly upon her.

“Go on, Louie; what next?”

“Oh, nothing much. Mother sold the furniture to an ‘antique’ woman that was hunting old things; and that paid for father’s medicine, and they said they wouldn’t touch the money they had put in the bank for your college; and then father got the place at the factory. It’s kind of hard work, I guess; but it’s good pay, and father thought he’d manage to let you finish; only mother gave out, and then everything went to pieces.”

The small, red lips puckered bravely, and suddenly the child threw her arms around her sister’s neck, and cried out, sobbing, “Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come!” and Cornelia wrapped her close to her heart.

Into the midst of this touching scene there stole a sweetly pungent odor of meat boiling dry, and suddenly Cornelia and Louise smelled it at the same instant, and flew for the stairs.

“I guess it’s not really burned yet,” said wise Louise. “It doesn’t smell that way,” comfortingly. “My, it makes me hungry!”

“And oh, my bread!” exclaimed Cornelia as she rounded the top of the next flight. “It ought to go into the oven. It will get too light.” They rescued the meat not at all hurt but just lusciously browned and most appetizing; and then they put the bread into the oven and turned their attention to potatoes and waffles.

“I’m going to make some maple-syrup,” said Cornelia; “it’s better home-made. I bought a bottle of mapleine this morning. We used to make maple fudge with it, and it’s good.”

“Isn’t this great?” exclaimed the little girl, watching the bubbling sugar and water. “Won’t father be glad?”

“But, Louie, where is Carey?” asked Cornelia suddenly.

The little girl’s face grew dark.

“He’s off!” she said shortly. “I guess he didn’t come home at all last night. Father worries a lot about him, and mother did too; but he’s been worse since mother was sick. He hardly ever comes in till after midnight, and then he smokes and smokes. Oh, it makes me sick! I told Harry if he grew up that way I’d never speak to him. And Harry says, if he ever does, he gives me leave to turn him down. Oh, Carey acts like a nut! I don’t see how he can, when he knows how father has to work, and everything. He just won’t get a position anywhere. He wants to have a good time. He plays ball, and he rides around in a rich fellow’s car, and he has a girl! Oh, he’s the limit.”

Cornelia felt her heart sinking.

“What kind of a girl, Louie?”

“Oh, a girl with flour on her face, and an awful tight skirt; and when she goes out evenings, she wears her back bare way down almost to her waist. I saw her in a concert at our church, and she was dressed that way there; and folks were all looking at her, and saying it wasn’t nice. She dances, too, and kicks, with lots of skirts and ruffles and things, made of chiffon; and she makes eyes at boys; and I know a girl at school that says she saw her smoking cigarettes at a restaurant once. You see it isn’t much use to fix up Carey’s room when he does things like that. He doesn’t deserve it.”

Cornelia looked aghast.

“Oh, but we must, Louie! We must all the more then. And perhaps the girl isn’t so bad if we knew her, and—and tried to help her. Some girls are awfully silly at a certain age, dear.”

“Well, you oughtta see her. Harry knows, and he thinks she’s the limit. He says the boys all talk about her. She paints her face, too, and wears big black earrings down on her shoulders sometimes, and she wears her hair just like the pictures of the devil!”

Cornelia had to laugh at the earnest, fierce little face; and the laugh broke the tension somewhat.

“Well, dearie, we’ll have to find a way to coax Carey back to us,” she said soothingly, even while her heart was sinking. “He’s our brother, you know; and we love him, and it would break mother’s heart.”

“Oh, I know,” sighed the little girl. “I’ve tried to think of something; but we’re so poor, and this house is dreadful. Of course, it’s a lot better than State Street, though,” she said, brightening.

“It is?” Cornelia’s voice conveyed dismay.

“Oh yes,” said Louise, not noticing her sister’s face. “We hadn’t any side windows at all there; the houses were close up, and there were very unpleasant people all around. It wasn’t at all a good neighborhood. Carey hated it. He wouldn’t come home for days and days. He said it wasn’t fit for pigs.”

“Where did he go? Where has he gone now, do you suppose?”

“Oh, off with the boys somewhere. Sometimes to their houses. Sometimes they take trips around. One of them has a car. His father’s rich. But I don’t like him. His name’s Brand Barlock. He drives wherever he likes. They went to Washington once, and were gone a week. Mother never slept a wink those nights, just sat at the front window and watched after we went to bed. I know, for I woke up and found her so several times. He might ’av gone to Baltimore now. There’s a game down that way sometime soon. I guess it was last night. Harry heard ’em talking about it. They go with the gang of fellows that used to play on our high school team when Carey was in school.”

“School?” Cornelia caught at the word hopefully. “Perhaps it’s only fun, then, Louie. Maybe, it’s nothing really bad.”

“No. They’re pretty tough,” sighed the wise child. “Harry knows. He hears the boys talk.”

“Well, dear, we’ll have to forget it now, anyway, and get to work. We must fix Carey’s room so he can sleep there tonight if he does come back, and we must have supper ready when father gets home.”

The child brightened. “Won’t they be surprised?” she said with a happy light in her eyes. “What do you want me to do? Shall I peel the potatoes?”

“Yes, do, and have plenty. We’ll mash them, shall we? I found the potato-masher in the bottom of a barrel in the parlor; so I don’t believe you’ve been using it lately.”

“That’s right. We had all we could do to bake them or boil them whole,” said Louise. “You bake the bread, and I’ll get the potatoes on. Then we’ll have plenty of time to put those things away upstairs and make Carey’s bed.”

“Are there any clean sheets? I didn’t know where to look.”

“No, there’s only one pair, and I kept them for you next week.”

“We can’t keep anything for me, duckie dear,” said Cornelia, laughing. “Carey’s got to have clean sheets this very night. I have a hunch he’s coming home, and I want that room to be ready. That’s the first step in getting him back to us, you know.”

“Oh, well, all right,” said the little sister. “They are in the lower drawer of our bureau. How good that bread smells! My, it was nice of you to make it! And how dear the dining-table looks with that little flower in the middle. Some girls’ sisters would have thought that was unnecessary. They would have made us wait for pretty things. But you didn’t, did you? I guess that’s what makes you an interior decorator, isn’t it? Father and mother are awfully proud of you. They talked about it most every night before Carey got to going away, how you would be a great artist some day, and all that; and my! it most killed them to have to call you home.”

Louise chattered on, revealing many a household tragedy, until Cornelia was cut to the heart and wanted to drop down and cry; only she had too much at stake to give up now.

They went upstairs presently with the clean sheets, and the blankets that had almost miraculously got themselves dry owing to a bright sun and a strong west wind that had arrived soon after they were put out; and they had a beautiful time making that bed. Carey wouldn’t know himself in such a bed. Then they hunted out a bureau-scarf, and they went through the tousled drawers of the chiffonier and bureau, and put things to rights, laying out a pile of things that needed mending or washing, and making the room look cheery and bright.

“It ought to have something pretty like a flower here, too,” sighed Louise, taking a final glance around as Cornelia folded the old eider-down quilt in a self-respecting puff at the foot of the bed, and gave another pat to the clean white pillow. “I know!” said Louise suddenly flitting downstairs to her own room and hurrying back again with a small oval easel picture of her mother, dusting it carefully with her handkerchief as she came. “There! Won’t that look better?”

“Indeed it will,” said her sister, her eyes filling with tears as she looked into the loving eyes of the dear mother from whom she had been separated so long; “and perhaps it will do Carey good to look into his mother’s eyes when he comes home; who knows?”

So they went down together to put the finishing touches to the supper and to talk of many things. Louise even got around to the play and the costume she was going to try to make; and Cornelia delighted her heart by saying she was sure she had just the very costume in her trunk, one that she wore in a college play herself, and she would help her make it over to fit.

Everything was ready for supper at last, and it was time within three minutes for father’s car to arrive. Harry would likely meet him at the corner and come with him. Cornelia was taking up the pot-roast, and telling Louise about beating the mashed potatoes to make them lighter. The waffle-iron had been found under the piano-stool in the parlor, and was sizzling hot and well greased awaiting the fluffy batter. The hot maple syrup was on the table and everything exactly ready. Suddenly they heard a noisy automobile thunder up to the front of the house and pause, a clatter of voices, and the car thundered on again. Footsteps up the walk, and the front door banged open and shut; feet stamped up the stairs, while a faint breath of cigarette smoke trailed out and penetrated into the kitchen to mingle with the fragrance of the dinner. The two cooks stopped, and looked at each other understandingly.

“He’s come,” said the eyes of the little sister.

“We must make him very welcome,” answered the eyes of the big sister, so tired she could hardly hold her young shoulders straight.

“Maybe he won’t stay,” whispered Louise softly a minute later. “Sometimes he doesn’t; he might have a date.”

“Here’s hoping,” said Cornelia gayly, as she dabbed the batter into the irons for the first waffle. “You’ll have to contrive to catch him if he tries to go away, Lou.”

“I wonder what he thinks of his room,” giggled the little sister. “I guess maybe he thought he’d made a mistake and got into the wrong house.”

It was all very still upstairs. There were not even any footsteps going around, not for what seemed like several minutes; then slowly the footsteps came down the stairs again, hesitating, paused at the second flight, and came on until they reached the open dining-room door.

Carey stood there gazing at the table as Louise came in bearing the dish of potatoes, and Cornelia followed her with the platter of meat, both earnestly intent and flushed with their work; and just at that moment, before the girls had looked up, the front door opened, and in came the father, with Harry whistling gayly behind him.

“Oh, gee!” he cried, stopping his whistling. “Don’t that supper smell good? Here’s hoping there’s plenty of it.”

It was at that instant that Cornelia looked up, and her eyes met the eyes of her handsome, reckless-looking brother, astonishment, bewilderment, shame, delight, and embarrassment struggling in his face.

CHAPTER VI

“Nell!”

There was genuine delight in the boy’s tone as he came forward to greet her, shyly, perhaps, and with a bit of shamed hesitancy because he could not but remember that the family had probably told her all about him, and she would of course disapprove of him as much as they did.

But Cornelia, with the steaming gravy-boat in one hand and a pile of hot plates in the other, turned a warm, rosy cheek up to him, her eyes still intent on putting down the dishes without spilling the treacherous gravy on the clean tablecloth.

“It’s great to see you again, Carey,” she said heartily, trying to make the situation as casual as possible. “Sorry to seem brief; but I have something luscious on the stove, and I’m afraid it’ll burn. Sit down quick, won’t you?—and be ready to eat it while it’s hot. We’ll talk afterward. I want to have a good look at you and see if you’ve grown more than I have.”

Her voice trailed off into the kitchen cheerily, and not in the least as though she had been palpitating between hope and fear about him all the afternoon and working herself to a frazzle getting his room ready.

She returned almost immediately with the first plate of golden-brown waffles, and stole a furtive glance at him from the kitchen doorway. He had not yet seated himself, although the others were bustling joyously and noisily into their chairs. He was still standing thoughtfully, staring around the dining-room and at the table. As she approached, he gave her a furtive, sweeping look, then dropped his lashes and slid into his chair, a half-frown beginning to grow on his brow. He looked as if he were expecting the next question to be: “Why weren’t you here last night? Where were you? Don’t you know you were rude?” but none of those questions were voiced. His father did clear his throat and glance up at him gravely; but Louise with quick instinct began to chatter about the syrup that Cornelia had made. His attention was turned aside, and the tense expression of his face relaxed as he looked about the pleasant table and noticed the happy faces.

“It hasn’t looked this way since your mother went away,” said the father with a deep sigh. “How good that bread looks! Real home-made bread again! What a difference that makes!” and he reached out, and took a slice as if it were something merely to look at and feel.

“I’ll say! That looks rare!” Carey volunteered, taking a slice himself and passing the plate. “Some smell, this dinner, what?” he added, drawing in a long, deep breath. “Seems like living again.”

His father’s tired eyes rested on him sadly, contemplatively. He opened his lips to speak; but Cornelia slid into her chair, and said, “Now, father, we’re ready”; and he bowed his head and murmured a low, sad little grace. So Carey was saved again from a much-deserved reproof. Cornelia couldn’t help being glad; and Louise looked at her with a knowing gleam in her eye as she raised her head, and broke into a brilliant smile. Louise had bitter knowledge of what it meant to have Carey reproved at a meal. There was always a scene, ending with no Carey.

“Yes, and,” began Louise swiftly as soon as the “Amen” was concluded, “there’s waffles and gingerbread! Think of that! And Nellie had time to fix up your bedroom, Kay. Did you go up there?”

“I should say I did! Nell, you’re a peach! I never meant to have it looking that way when you came home. I sure am ashamed you had to dig that stuff all out. Some junk I had there. I meant to take a day off and clean house pretty soon.”

“Well, now you can help me with some of the other rooms, instead,” his sister replied, smiling, and hastened back to turn her waffles.

“I sure will!” said Carey heartily. “When do you want me? Tomorrow morning? Nothing in the way of my working all day if you say the word. We used to make a pretty good team, Nell, you and I. Think we could accomplish a lot in a day.”

“Yes, Carey hasn’t any job to hinder him doing what he pleases,” put in Harry with a bitter young sneer. “I’d ’uv had it all done by myself long ago if I hadn’t had a job after school!”

“Yes, you young brag!” began Carey with a deep scowl. “You think you’re it and then some!”

“It would seem as if you might have given a little time, Carey,” began his father almost petulantly, with a look about his mouth of restraining less mild things that he might have said.

Louise looked apprehensively at her sister.

“Oh, well,” put in Cornelia quickly, “you couldn’t be expected to know what to do, any of you, till your big sister got home. You’ve all done wonderfully well, I think, to get as much done as you have; and I only blame you, everyone of you, especially father dear, for not sending for me sooner. It was really—well, criminal, you know, Daddy, to keep me in expensive luxury and ignorance that way. But I’m not going to scold you here before folks. We’ll have that out after they’ve all gone to bed, won’t we? We’re going to have nothing but pleasant sayings at this supper table. It’s a kind of reunion, you know, after so many years. Just think; we haven’t all been together for—how long is it?—four years? Doesn’t that seem really awful? When I think of it, I realize how terribly selfish I have been. I didn’t realize it in college because I was having such a good time, but I have been selfish and lazy and absolutely thoughtless. I hope you’ll all forgive me.”

Carey lifted wondering eyes, and his scowl faded while he studied his pretty sister’s guileless face thoughtfully. The attention was diverted from him, and his anger was cooling; but somehow he began to feel deep in his soul that it was really he that had been selfish. All their scolding and nagging hadn’t made him in the least conscious of it; but this new, old, dear, pretty sister taking the blame on herself seemed to throw a new light on his own doings. Of course it was merely momentary, and made no very deep impression; but still the idea had come, and would never be quite driven away again.

The supper was a success from every point of view. The pot-roast was as tender as cheese; the mashed potatoes melted under the gravy like snow before the summer sun, and were enjoyed with audible praise; and the waffles sizzled and baked and disappeared, and more took their places, until at last the batter was all gone.

“Well, I couldn’t hold another one,” said Carey, “but they certainly were jim-dandies. Say, you haven’t forgotten how to cook, Nell!” and he cast a look of deep admiration toward his sister.