Part 13 (1/2)
”Norman will be back soon,” said Mrs. Ware, looking out from her aureole of pink ruffles, which she had found such a comfortable s.h.i.+eld from the draughts that she left it as Mary had placed it. ”He'll fill the box again as soon as he comes.”
But Mary had slipped into a coat and was tying a veil over her ears. ”It isn't safe to wait,” she answered. ”We'd be stiff and stark as icicles in no time if we were to let the fires go out. I don't mind being stoker. It's good exercise.”
She skipped out to the wood-pile gaily enough, but the tune she was whistling changed to a long-drawn note of surprise and dismay when she saw what inroads they had made on it since the last time she had noticed it.
”We'll have to have another cord right away,” she thought. ”I never dreamed that fuel would be such a big item of expense, away down here so far South. But if we have much more weather like this it will be a very serious item.”
The discovery sent her back to her account book again, but this time she took it to her own room where Jack could not see her figuring. The butcher raised the price of meat that week. Both b.u.t.ter and eggs went higher, and Jack's rubber air-cus.h.i.+on sprung such a leak that it collapsed hopelessly. A new one was a necessity. Then the cold Norther made Jack's rheumatism so much worse that he had to stay in bed, and several visits from the doctor and a druggist's bill had to be added to the list of the week's calamities.
The last straw was reached when Joyce's letter came, deploring the fact that the check which she was enclosing was only half the size which she usually sent. She had some unexpected expenses at the studio which she was obliged to meet, but she hoped to send the customary amount next month. This information was not in the letter which Mrs. Ware promptly sent in to Jack by Norman, but in a separate postscript, folded inside the check. Mary read it with startled eyes.
”Whatever are we going to do?” she asked in a despairing whisper.
Mrs. Ware shook her head and sat folding and unfolding the check in an absent-minded way for several minutes. Then she went into her room for pen and ink to endorse it, so that Mary, who was going down into the town that afternoon, could cash it. She was gone a long time and when she came back she had two letters ready to post.
As Mary went down the road a while later, she glanced at the first envelope which was addressed to Joyce, admiring as she always did her mother's penmans.h.i.+p.
”It's just like her,” she thought, ”so fine and even and ladylike.” Then she gave an exclamation of surprise as she saw that the second envelope was addressed to Mrs. Barnaby.
”Whatever can she be writing to _her_ about?” she wondered. ”It's queer she never said anything about it, when we always talk over everything together, even the tiniest trifles.”
She puzzled over it nearly all the way to the post-office till she remembered that she had heard her mother say that she was not altogether satisfied with the new doctor's treatment for Jack, and that she wanted to ask Mrs. Barnaby whom to call in consultation. Satisfied with that solution, Mary thought no more about the matter till the following Friday, when she came back from a short call at the rectory, to find that Mrs. Barnaby had just driven away from the house. She was disappointed, for these visits were always hailed as joyful events by the entire household.
”I wouldn't have missed her for _anything_!” exclaimed Mary, following her mother into their bedroom. ”She's so diverting. What particularly funny things did she say this time? _What's that?_”
Her glance and question indicated a bundle that her mother had brought in from the back doorstep and laid on the bed. Mrs. Ware shook her head meaningly, and closed the door into Jack's room before she answered.
Then she said in a low tone:
”It's some linen and lace that Mrs. Barnaby brought this afternoon. I wrote to her asking her if she had any fine hand-sewing that I could do.
s.h.!.+” she whispered, lifting a warning finger, as Mary's cry of ”Why, Mamma Ware!” interrupted her.
”Jack will hear you, and he is not to know. That's why I had Pedro take the bundle to the back door. Mrs. Barnaby understands. Something had to be done, and under the circ.u.mstances sewing is the only thing I can turn my hand to at home.”
”But mamma!” exclaimed Mary, so distressed that she was almost crying.
”Your eyes are not strong enough for that any more. You nearly wore yourself out trying to support us when we were little, and I'm very sure we're not going to allow it now. Joyce would be terribly distressed, and as for Jack--I know perfectly well that he'd just rather lie down and die than have you do it. We'll bundle that stuff right back to Mrs.
Barnaby, and I'll go down town and see if I can't get a position in one of the stores.”
Mrs. Ware's answer was in such a low voice that it went no farther than the closed door, but it silenced Mary's protests. Only a few times in her remembrance had the gentle little woman used that tone of authority with her children, but on those rare occasions they recognized the force of her determination and the uselessness of opposing it. Mary turned away distressed and sore over the situation. She said nothing more, but as she went about her work she kept wiping away the tears, and a fierce rebellion raged inwardly.
There would have been little said at the supper-table that night if Norman had not come home in a talkative mood. He was to start to the public High School the following Monday, at the beginning of the new term, and had recently made the acquaintance of a boy lately come to Bauer, who would enter with him.
”Ed Masters is his name,” Norman reported, raising his voice a trifle, so that Jack, who was taking his supper at the same time from a bedside table in the next room, might be included in the conversation.
”I like him first rate, and it will make it lots easier for me at school, not to be the only new boy. The only trouble is, he doesn't know whether his folks are going to stay in Bauer long enough to make it worth while for him to start or not. They came for the whole winter, but they say that they can't stand it at the hotel many more days if something isn't done to those Mallory kids. Ed says they're regular little imps for mischief. They've been here only two weeks, but they're known all over Bauer as 'die kleinen teufel.'”
”Which being interpreted,” laughed Jack from the next room, ”means the little devils. What have they done to earn such a name?”
”It might be easier to tell what they haven't done,” answered Norman.
”There's two of them, the boy seven and the girl eight, but they're exactly the same size, and look so much alike everybody takes them for twins. They put a puppy in the ice-cream freezer yesterday morning, Ed says, and Miss Edna, the landlady's daughter, almost had a spasm when she went to make ice-cream for dinner and found it in the can.
”Yesterday afternoon the delivery wagon stopped at the side entrance of the hotel (it's the Williams House where Ed is staying), and those children waited until the boy had gone in with a basket of groceries.