Mr. Starkweather was a widower. Helen’s Aunt Eunice had been dead three years. It had never been considered necessary by either Mr. Starkweather, or his daughters, to write “Aunt Mary’s folks in Montana” of Mrs. Starkweather’s death.
Correspondence between the families had ceased at the time of Mrs. Morrell’s death. The Starkweather girls understood that Aunt Mary’s husband had “done something” before he left New York for the wild and woolly West. The family did not—Ahem!—speak of him.
The three girls were respectively eighteen, sixteen, and fourteen. Even Flossie considered herself entirely grown up. She attended a private school not far from Central Park, and went each day dressed as elaborately as a matron of thirty.
For Hortense, who was just Helen Morrell’s age, “school had become a bore.” She had a smattering of French, knew how to drum nicely on the piano—she was still taking lessons in that polite accomplishment—had only a vague idea of the ordinary rules of English grammar, and couldn’t write a decent letter, or spell words of more than two syllables, to save her life.
Belle golfed. She did little else just now, for she was a creature of fads. Occasionally she got a new one, and with kindred spirits played that particular fad to death.
She might have found a much worse hobby to ride. Getting up early and starting for the Long Island links, or for Westchester, before her sisters had had their breakfast, was not doing Belle a bit of harm. Only, she was getting in with a somewhat “sporty” class of girls and women older than herself, and the bloom of youth had been quite rubbed off.
Indeed, these three girls were about as fresh as is a dried prune. They had jumped from childhood into full-blown womanhood (or thought they had), thereby missing the very best and sweetest part of their girls’ life.
They had come in from their various activities of the day when Helen’s telegram arrived. Naturally they ran with it to their father’s “den”—a gorgeously upholstered yet small library on the ground floor, at the back.
“What is it now, girls?” demanded Mr. Starkweather, looking up in some dismay at this general onslaught. “I don’t want you to suggest any further expenditures this month. I have paid all the bills I possibly can pay. We must retrench—we must retrench.”
“Oh, Pa!” said Flossie, saucily, “you’re always saying that. I believe you say ‘We must retrench!’ in your sleep.”