"No, she really wasn't to-day. You read my simile at once, didn't you, Miss Roxy? She is feather-beddy at times, but to-day she happened to be very amiable. I think my practical use of her feather bed appealed to her, though she didn't see how I could want such a raft of pillows," she said. "You are ready to have me try that on?"
She stood up while the seamstress, with her mouth bristling with pins, snipped here and pinched in there, till Janet sighed from the enforced position of standing still.
"Just the skirt measure now," said Miss Roxy. "Forty-two, no, I think we'd better say forty-three, Mrs. Ferguson." Miss Roxy looked up from her kneeling posture. "She's grown an inch, I do believe." She measured Janet's slim form, running her fingers along the tape measure. "Now you may go. I'm through with you for to-day. Suppose you get that ticking and measure off the pillows the size you want them, and stitch them up, so I can get to work at them first thing in the morning."
Janet obeyed and was soon clacking away at the machine, her cheek glowing and her soft hair curling around the nape of her neck as she grew warm from the exercise. "These are strenuous times," she remarked as she tossed the last square of ticking on a chair. "I will leave the covers till to-morrow. In a week—a week, momsey, I shall be ready to go. Please stop now. You've been driving ahead all day. I should think you would be thankful to see the last of me, for it means a little more rest for you. Now Stuart doesn't need half this fussing over. He gets his clothes at his tailor's, you see that his stockings have no holes in them, and there he is, while I am an eternal nuisance. Here, put that away. You'll go till you drop, and you won't drop till I go—that's a queer sort of sentence—anyhow, I'd rather go without that shirtwaist than have you make another buttonhole this day. Come, I want to talk to you."
She drew her mother from her chair and led her down to the porch where the feather bed still lay. "Let's turn our backs on fussinesses and go out to see if there are any peaches ripe on that tree by the hen-house. You know we always liked those better than any. Oh, dear momsey, it's going to be a long pull, isn't it? Four years of it before I can come home to stay. There'll be the holidays, though, and maybe I shall not be so very homesick between whiles. It will be fine to have Stuart within a couple of hours' ride of me. That counts for a great deal, doesn't it? I don't believe I could stand being so many miles away from everybody. It was very different at Oak Hill, where I could come home every Friday, for no matter how badly things went, there were always the Friday afternoons to think of, and by training oneself, it could be made to seem near even on Mondays."
She kept her arm around her mother's waist as she led her down the garden walk and through a little gate to the hen-house. There she released her hold and climbed on top of the building, feeling among the leaves for a ripe peach. "The best ones are always on top," she remarked. "Here are two beauties. Take them, mother." She crouched on the roof and held out the downy fruit, then clambered easily to the ground demanding her share of the spoils.
"It's a wonder Dicky didn't get them," she said, "but they were a little beyond his reach. Now come, let us go somewhere by ourselves and enjoy them like two nice complacent greedy-gluts. Don't you love to be that once in a while? One gets so tired of virtuously sharing all the good things, and I think it is really a necessary part of our development to indulge our appetites sometimes to the exclusion of our friends."
"That is a very Epicurean philosophy," returned her mother.
"Perhaps, but one should test all philosophies before settling down on any special one. Now, I know if you had your way, you'd save both of these peaches and give one to—let's see—Miss Roxy, and the other to father. I am just reveling in your not doing it. We will gorge ourselves and be wicked and selfish for once."
"On one peach apiece?" laughed her mother.