“That’s because you haven’t a proper sense of humor,” returned Miss Rindy. “A laugh is worth more to me than servile respect.”
So Beulah, being “invited” to cook, wash, iron, and clean, stayed on, and the days went less heavily for Ellen. To be sure, she often sighed over the uninteresting matter contained in the doctor’s notes, and wearied of statistics, still at sight of Beulah’s ponderous figure and smiling black face, her thanks went flying heavenward for the means which enabled her to pay for this helper, and the tangles in her temper smoothed out accordingly.
However, once in a while the effort to appreciate plain living and high thinking was too much for her, and she so yearned for the flesh-pots, represented by those things which Frank’s attentions promised, that she smiled upon him graciously and built foolish castles and saw herself joint owner of the red automobile and mistress of an ornate abode.
“I believe I am developing into a flirt, and at seventeen that is pretty bad,” she confessed to Caro.
Caro giggled and said: “Go ahead, honey. I’d love you to be Florence’s sister-in-law; she would be so pleased.”
“Now you start my compunctions to raging,” cried Ellen, “for you know I’d be far from pleased. I suppose sisters-in-law can’t be eliminated even from daydreams. Perhaps one could stand Frank, but his family!” She made an expressive gesture and Caro giggled again. Therefore to Frank’s surprise and dismay she turned him the cold shoulder the next time they met, while she did penance by working doubly hard the following day.
CHAPTER XIII
A SPRING VISITOR
Long before all this Jeremy Todd had returned from the city to report that he had delivered the violin safely into the hands of Mr. Barstow, who would keep it till Reed Marshall came back to claim it. A royal time Jeremy had had with his old friend. “That visit has just made me over,” declared the good old man. “You remember that line in one of Richard Watson Gilder’s poems: ‘Now who can take from us what has been ours?’ That often comforts when the dark days are upon us. No one can ever take from me the joy of those days I have had with Peter Barstow.”
“Did he seem chagrined that I kept his gift such a little while,—that I was ready to part with it so soon?” Ellen asked wistfully.