There had been girls in the country place where they lived, girls of the best old families, too, who, feeling the pinch of poverty that followed the changed conditions of the South after the war, had gone away to teach school or learn typewriting. But Agnes, bringing up her sisters in strict accordance with the old family traditions, carefully weeded out of their young minds any such tendencies toward self-support. With the city only fifteen miles away, where they might have had the society and advantages they longed for, her prejudices and family pride kept them in their cage of circumstances, waiting helplessly like two irresponsible little canaries, for some outside hand to open the door.
"PAUSING IN HER SCRUBBING"[ToList]
"Honey," said Mam Daphne, pausing in her scrubbing as Claribel came into the kitchen for a hot iron, "I'se been studyin' ovah you-all's case right smaht, lately. You'se done had to move out'n de front o' de house, count o' de roof leakin', an' you shet up de west wing, so many windows was broke. Soon you-all will be movin' into de kitchen. Why don't you sell this great place fo' it goes clean to destruction, an' buy a little cottage jes' big enough fo' you three chillun? You'd be so much more comf'table."
"Sell Marchmont, Mam Daphne," cried Claribel. "Why, it has never belonged to any one but a Mason since the days of Boone! Besides," she explained, with the consideration they had always shown their mother's old nurse, "there'll be no need for it when sister's book is published. Last spring, when the Southern Sentinel gave her their book reviewing to do every week, we discovered that she had been at work for years on a novel of her own. When that is published she is going to take us to the city every winter. She'll be so rich and famous then we'll meet all the lions and people worth knowing. Wilma and I will study designing and take painting lessons, and we'll go to parties and concerts and have as many beaux as mamma had when she was young. And, best of all, we'll repair Marchmont, and you are to come and live with us again. That is part of sister's plan."
Mam Daphne listened with a look of incredulous wonder on her old face.
"Aw, go 'long, honey, you'se a-foolin' me!" she exclaimed, dipping her brush into the suds again. But an eager voice in the doorway made her look up to see the careworn face of the oldest sister.
"Yes, it's true, Mam Daphne," cried Agnes. "I am almost through, now, and as soon as these noisy children are off to the picnic I shall begin my last chapter. I am just in the mood for it, and I shall not even stop to get any lunch."
"Then I'll leave you a devilled egg and a spice cake to nibble on," said Wilma, "for there won't be a crust of bread left in the house when this lunch is taken out of it. I'm glad genius burns. What a heavenly day this is going to be for all of us!"