“Can you, dear?” I asked.
“I could make a dress pretty well, when I went to Mrs. Sykes. I learned a great deal while I was there. She frequently had a dressmaker in the house, and then I helped her, and so learned a great deal. I can make our dresses as well as any ordinary modiste.”
“That will be a great help to us,” I said, “and one, or the other of you, will find time every fine day to give Alice a walk, and when she is able, to hear her read.”
Both girls eagerly accepted their duty to their sick sister, and Mary said, with an excitement not very common with her, “I vote, Mamma, that we stay together, and fight the battle of life out on that line.”
“And you, Lilly, what do you say?”
“Let us stay together, even if we live on bread and water.”
I was the proudest and happiest mother in the world at that moment, and I answered joyfully, “You are right, dears, we will fight the battle out on this line.”
“What a game it will be!” cried Lilly. “All of us for Mamma, and Mamma for all of us! We shall win! No doubt of it!”
And that night as I lay silently happy and thoughtful, with the children sleeping at my side, the grand old rallying cry of a famous English school wherever gathered for honorable strife, suddenly rung in my ears,
“Play up! play up! and play the game!”