IX
Grace addressed herself sincerely to the business of bringing all the cheer possible to the home circle. She overcame her annoyance at being obliged to recount the details of her work, realizing that her mother spent her days at home and save for the small affairs of her club had little touch with the world beyond her dooryard. Ethel’s days in the insurance office were much alike and she lacked Grace’s gift for making a good story out of a trifling incident. Even Mr. Durland enjoyed Grace’s account of the whims and foibles of the women she encountered at Shipley’s. Grace reasoned that so long as she lived at home it would be a mistake not to make the best of things; but even in her fits of repentance she had not regretted her assertion of the right to go and come unquestioned.
In the week following she left the house on two evenings saying merely that she was going out. On one of these occasions she returned a book to the public library; on another she walked aimlessly for an hour. These unexplained absences were to determine whether her new won liberty was really firmly established. Nothing was said either by her mother or Ethel, though it was clear that they were mystified by her early return, though not to the point of asking where she had been. On a third evening she announced at the table that she had earned a good bonus that day and would celebrate by taking them all to the vaudeville. Mrs. Durland and Ethel gave plausible excuses for declining, but not without expressing their appreciation of the invitation in kind terms, and Grace and her father set off alone.
In her cogitations Grace was convinced that nothing short of a miracle could ever improve materially the family fortunes. They had the house free of encumbrance, but it needed re-roofing, and the furnishings were old and dingy. Mrs. Durland had worked out a budget by which to manage the family finances, and it was clear enough to Grace that what she and Ethel earned would just about take care of the necessary running expenses. Mrs. Durland had received for many years an income of five hundred dollars a year from her father’s estate, and this Grace learned had always been spent on the family. The last payment had been put away, Mrs. Durland explained to her daughters, to help establish Roy after he completed his law course. It was impressed upon Grace constantly that all the hopes of bettering the family conditions centered in Roy. Ethel shared, though in less degree, her mother’s confidence in the son of the house. Grace kept silent when Roy’s prospects were discussed, feeling that it would serve no purpose to express her feeling that Roy had no special talent for the law, and even if he had the Durlands were without family or business connections that could possibly assist him in establishing himself.