But Dorothy, passing an armful of bed linen to the waiting Lena, soothingly declared: "It's no fault of yours, mamma dear, if he does not understand—I'm sure you tried hard enough," and Mrs. Lawton, bridling and important, at once followed Lena upstairs to make things interesting for that handmaiden. As soon as they were alone the girls looked ruefully at each other, and Dorothy exclaimed: "Fancy sending papa on such an errand!"
"Yes," groaned Sybil, "it is funny—and oh, if he could only throw a little light on the family finances, I'd forgive him if we all lay in total darkness to-night. Dorrie! Dorrie! what are we coming to? Is not this an awful place? I would not say a word against it before poor papa—he seems so proud of his bargain. But, Dorrie, we'll all find our teeth rattling like castanets some fine morning, and chills mean quinine, and quinine means money—money!"
Dorothy sat down dejectedly on a step of the ladder and pushed her sunny brown hair back from her damp forehead. "Yes—it is dreadful! We must put mamma and papa in the driest room and see what the cellar is like, and perhaps we may find some boy about who will cut away some of those branches and let a little sunlight in on this window that I see mamma has marked for her own. A little shaking and shivering won't matter so much for us, Sybil. We are young and can stand it, but papa is not strong and fever would simply eat him up, poor dear!"
Sybil bent suddenly, and, kissing her sister's cheek: "You're a patient little soul, Dorrie," she said, "but I tell you I shall go mad presently over this never-ending mending and turning and dyeing, this wearing of each other's clothes, this mad effort to keep up appearances! Why can't we do something as other girls do—who help themselves?"
"Ah, but mamma!" interposed Dorothy. "She would never consent. We are ladies, you know, dear, and——"
"Idiots!" savagely completed Sybil, "who don't know how to do one single thing well. I can paint—a little; you can play—a little. We both can sing—a little, and we both can dance perfectly!"
And she flung her arm about Dorothy's slim waist and together they went waltzing out into the old hall, their light, swaying figures skimming swallow-like over the sunken porch and out into the sunshine, where presently a great brown root tripped them up, and they fell, a laughing heap, on the moss. Next instant two excited voices were crying: "Violets! Oh, real violets!" And with fingers trembling with haste, and eyes wide with delight, they gathered the timid little hooded darlings of the spring, forgetting their poverty, their makeshifts, and their anxieties, as God meant young things should forget at times, and only remembering that they were sisters, who loved each other and had found out there under the sky their first bed of sweet wild violets.