"I'd a lot rather we had things like that. What with you and papa, sometimes I feel as if I were living in a cloud of feathers."
"You dear thing," Anne patted her shoulder. "Well, Belle will be along with her spray in a minute and wet us all down nice and flat. I don't suppose I'll go right to sleep——"
"She'll look in for a minute, I guess."
Anne laughed. "She sure will."
CHAPTER THREE
Belle Mitchell was much taller than Anne or Hilda, with straight, very heavy brown hair and brown eyes. She had a jolly, even disposition, was rarely hurt herself, never knew when she hurt others, and felt competent to manage any situation in which she found herself. Her favorite expression was "look facts in the face." She loved Anne with the same protecting tenderness that Anne felt for Hilda, and never understood the chain of "highfalutin" reasoning by which Anne finally exploded into one of her rare rages. James Mitchell had always been a little afraid of Belle, but he agreed with Hilda that she "had a practical streak." This was supposed to have descended to her intact, like an heirloom, from James' Scotch grandmother.
At seventeen, Belle had looked over the possibilities of the future, left high-school and gone into hospital training. Four years later she was earning twenty-five dollars a week. She had then left the family and taken an apartment with two other nurses. As she explained to Anne:
"The only way to go on caring for your family is to get away from them."
She had paid for Anne's course in a good business college and supplemented the family income with five dollars a week, until Anne was making enough to pay her own board. Then she stopped.
"In some silly streak she'll call 'being honest with papa,' mamma will tell him, and some race-track tout will get that extra five. Or she'll have a fit of rebellion and go off at a tangent in another washing machine or bread mixer or aluminum contraption for getting a whole dinner under one lid, and nobody will have the benefit. But kidlets," and here Belle had put her arms about Anne in a way that always melted any hardness Anne felt for Belle's practicality, "this rule is not for you. If you want any extras—please, sisterkin, ask, won't you?"