The Camerons of Highboro Part 20

The appearance of that usually spotless kitchen had a queer effect on Elliott. She saw so many things needing to be done at once that she didn't do any of them. She simply stood and stared hopelessly at the wreck of comfort and cleanliness and good cheer.

"h.e.l.lo!" said Bruce at the door. "Want an extra hand for an hour?"

"I thought you were cutting ensilage," said Elliott. It was good to see Bruce; the courage in his voice lifted her spirits in spite of her.

"I've left a subst.i.tute." The boy glanced into the stove and started for the wood-box.

"Oh, dear! I forgot that fire. Has it gone out?"

"Not quite. I'll have it going again in a jiff."

He came back with a broom in his hands.

"Let me do that," said the girl.

"Oh, all right." He relinquished the broom and brought out the dish-pan. "Hi-yi, Stan, lend a hand here!"

The boy in the doorway gave one glance at Elliott's tear-stained face and came quietly into the room. "Sure," he said, picking up a dish-cloth and gingerly reaching for a tumbler. "Which end do you take 'em by, top or bottom?"

Stannard wiping dishes, and with Bruce Fearing! The sight was so strange that Elliott's broom stopped moving. The two boys at the dish-pan chaffed each other good-naturedly; their jokes might have seemed a little forced, had you examined them carefully, but the effect was normal and cheering. Now and then they threw a word to the girl and the pile of clean dishes grew under their hands.

Elliott's broom began to move again. Something warm stirred at her heart. She felt sober and humble and ashamed and--yes, happy--all at once. How nice boys were when they were nice!

Then she remembered something.

"Oh, Stan, wasn't it to-day you were going home?"

"Nix," Stannard replied. "Guess I'll stay on a bit. School hasn't begun. I want to go nutting before I hit the trail for home."

It was a different-looking kitchen the boys left half an hour later and a different-looking girl.

Bruce lingered a minute behind Stannard. "We haven't had any telegram," he said. "Remember that. And as for things in here, I wouldn't let 'em bother me, if I were you! You can't do everything, you know. Keep cool, feed us the stuff folks send in, and let some things slide."

"Mother Jess doesn't let things slide."

"Mother Jess has been at it a good many years, but I'll bet she would now and then if things got too thick and she couldn't keep both ends up. There's more to Mother Jess's job than what they call housekeeping."

"Oh, yes," sighed Elliott, "I know that. But just what do you mean, Bruce, that I could do?"

He hesitated a minute. "Well, call it morale. That suggests the thing."

Elliott thought hard for a minute after the door closed on Bruce.

Perhaps, after all, seeing that the family had three meals a day and lived in a decently clean house and slept warm at night, necessary as such oversight was, wasn't the most imperative business in hand.

Somehow or other those things weren't at all what came into her mind when she thought of Aunt Jessica--no, indeed, though Aunt Jessica made such perfectly delicious things to eat. What came into her mind was far different--like the way Aunt Jessica had sat on Elliott's bed and kissed her, that homesick first night; Aunt Jessica's face at meal-time, with Uncle Bob across the table and all her boys and girls filling the s.p.a.ce between; Aunt Jessica comforting Priscilla when the child had met with some mishap. Priscilla seldom cried when she hurt herself; "Mother kisses the place and makes it well." The words linked themselves with Bruce's in Elliott's thought. Was that what he had meant by morale? She couldn't have put into words what she understood just then. For a minute a door in her brain seemed to swing open and she saw straight into the heart of things. Then it clicked together and left her saying, "I guess I fell down on that part of my job, Mother Jess."

Elliott hung up her ap.r.o.n and mounted the stairs. She didn't stop with the second floor and her own little room, but kept right on to the attic. There was a door at the head of the attic stairs. Elliott pushed it open. On a broken-backed horsehair sofa Gertrude lay, face down, her nose buried in a faded pillow. In a wabbly rocker, at imminent risk of a breakdown, Priscilla jerked back and forth.

Gertrude's hair was tousled and Priscilla's face was tear-stained and swollen.

"Don't you think," Elliott suggested, "it is time we girls washed our faces and made ourselves pretty?"

"I left you all the dishes to do." Gertrude's voice was m.u.f.fled by the pillow. "I--I just couldn't help it."

"That's all right. They're done now. I didn't do them, either. Let's go down-stairs and wash up."

"I don't want to be pretty," Priscilla objected, continuing to rock.

Gertrude neither moved nor spoke again.

What should Elliott do? She remembered Bruce.

"We haven't had any telegram, you know," she said. n.o.body spoke.

"Well, then, we were three little geese, weren't we? Not having had a telegram means a lot just now." Priscilla stopped rocking.

"I'm going to believe Sidney will get well," Elliott continued. It was hard work to talk to such unresponsive ears, but she kept right on.

"And now I am going down-stairs to put on one of my prettiest dresses, so as to look cheerful for supper. You may try whether you can get into that blue dress of mine you like so much, Trudy. I'm going to let Priscilla wear my coral beads."

"The pink ones?" asked Priscilla.

"The pink ones. They will be just a match for your pink dress."

"I don't feel like dressing up," said Gertrude.

Elliott felt like clapping her hands. She had roused Trudy to speech.

"Then wear something of your own," she said stanchly. "It doesn't matter what we wear, so long as we look nice."

Mercurial Priscilla was already feeling the new note in the air.

Elliott wouldn't talk so, would she, if Sidney really were not going to get well? And yet there was Gertrude, who didn't seem to feel cheered up a bit. Pris's little heart was torn.

Elliott tried one last argument. "I think Mother Jess would like to have us do it for Father Bob and the boys' sake--to help keep up their courage."

Priscilla bounced out of the rocker. "Will it help keep up their courage for us to wear our pretty clothes?"

"I had a notion it might."

"Let's do it, Trudy. I--I think I feel better already."

Gertrude sat up on the horsehair sofa. "Maybe Mother would like us to."

"I'm sure she'd like us to keep on hoping," said Elliott earnestly.

"And it doesn't matter what we do, so long as we do something to show that's the way we've made up our minds to feel. If you can think of any better way to show it than by dressing up, Trudy--"

"No," said Gertrude. "But I think I'll wear my own clothes to-day, Elliott. Thank you, just the same. Some day, if Sid--I mean some day I'll love to try on your blue dress, if you will let me."

Three girls, as pretty and chic and trim as nature and the contents of their closets could make them, sat down to supper that night. It was not a jolly meal, but the girls set the pace, and every one did his best to be cheerful and brave.

Half-way through supper Stannard laid down his fork to ask a question.

"What's happened to your hair, Trudy?"