"I reckon Uncle Paul would be rather surprised," Pauline said one evening, "if he could know all the queer sorts of ways in which we use his money. But the little easings-up do count for so much."
"Indeed they do," Hilary agreed warmly, "though it hasn't all gone for easings-ups, as you call them, either." She had sat down right in the middle of getting ready for bed, to revel in her ribbon box; she so loved pretty ribbons!
The committee on finances, as Pauline called her mother, Hilary, and herself, held frequent meetings. "And there's always one thing," the girl would declare proudly, "the treasury is never entirely empty."
She kept faithful account of all money received and spent; each month a certain amount was laid away for the "rainy day"—which meant, really, the time when the checks should cease to come—-"for, you know, Uncle Paul only promised them for the summer," Pauline reminded the others, and herself, rather frequently. Nor was all of the remainder ever quite used up before the coming of the next check.
"You're quite a business woman, my dear," Mr. Shaw said once, smiling over the carefully recorded entries in the little account-book she showed him. "We must have named you rightly."
She wrote regularly to her uncle; her letters unconsciously growing more friendly and informal from week to week. They were bright, vivid letters, more so than Pauline had any idea of. Through them, Mr. Paul Shaw felt himself becoming very well acquainted with these young relatives whom he had never seen, and in whom, as the weeks went by, he felt himself growing more and more interested.
Without realizing it, he got into the habit of looking forward to that weekly letter; the girl wrote a nice clear hand, there didn't seem to be any nonsense about her, and she had a way of going right to her point that was most satisfactory. It seemed sometimes as if he could see the old white parsonage and ivy-covered church; the broad tree-shaded lawns; the outdoor parlor, with the young people gathered about the tea-table; Bedelia, picking her way along the quiet country roads; the great lake in all its moods; the manor house.
Sometimes Pauline would enclose one or two of Hilary's snap-shots of places, or persons. At one of these, taken the day of the fishing picnic, and under which Hilary had written "The best catch of the season," Mr. Paul Shaw looked long and intently. Somehow he had never pictured Phil to himself as middle-aged. If anyone had told him, when the lad was a boy, that the time would come when they would be like strangers to each other—Mr. Paul Shaw slipped the snap-shot and letter back into their envelope.
It was that afternoon that he spent considerable time over a catalogue devoted entirely to sporting goods; and it was a fortnight later that Patience came flying down the garden path to where Pauline and Hilary were leaning over the fence, paying a morning call to Bedelia, sunning herself in the back pasture.
"You'll never guess what's come this time! And Jed says he reckons he can haul it out this afternoon if you're set on it! And it's addressed to the 'Misses Shaw,' so that means it's mine, too!" Patience dropped on the grass, quite out of breath.