CHAPTER II.
BANISHING GHOSTS
There was a cheerful bustle in the kitchen when Dories opened the side door. Her mother was preparing the noon meal with her customary wordless song, although now and then a merry message to the frail boy, who so often sat in a low chair near the stove, was sung to the melody. Just then the newcomer heard the lilted announcement: “Footsteps I hear, and now will appear my very dear little daughter.”
Dories was repentant. “Oh, Mother, if I haven’t stayed out too late again, and you’ve had to stop your sewing to get lunch.”
Little Peter paused in his whittling long enough to remark, “Dori, you’ve been crying. What for?”
But a tactful mother shook her head quickly at the small boy, saying brightly, “O, I was glad to stop sewing and stretch a bit. That brocade dress is hard to work on. I don’t know how many machine needles it has broken. But since it belongs to a rich person she won’t mind paying for them.”
After putting the golden aster in a vase, Dories snatched her apron from its hook in the closet and put it on with darkening looks. “Mother Moore,” she threatened, “if you don’t go and lie down on the lounge until lunch is ready, I’m not going to let you sew a single bit more today. It’s just terribly wicked, and all wrong somehow, that you have to make dresses for other women to keep us alive when my very own father’s very own Aunt Jane is simply rolling in wealth, and——”
“Tut! Tut! Little firefly!” Her mother laughingly shook a stirring spoon in her direction. “If you had ever seen your stately old Aunt Jane, you just couldn’t conceive of her rolling in anything. That would be much too undignified.”
“But, Mother, you know I meant that figuratively, not literally. She is rich and we are poor. Now I ask you what right has one member of a family to have all that his heart desires and another to have to sew for a living.”
Little Peter tittered: “It’s her heart, if it’s Great-Aunt Jane you’re talking about.” A sharp retort was on the girl’s lips when her mother said cheerily, “Now, kiddies, let’s talk about something else. Mrs. Doran sent us over a whole pint of cream. Shall we have it whipped on those last blackberries that Peter found this morning out in Briary Meadow, or shall I make a little biscuit shortcake?”
“Shortcake! Shortcake! I want shortcake!” Peter sang out.