“Not at this hour of the night, for working girls.” And the candle was blown out.
CHAPTER XIII.
GETTING DOWN TO REALITIES.
“WELL, Mother dear, I’m off! Please wish me good luck!”
“I wish you patience and wisdom. These will bring the only sort of ‘luck’ worth having.”
“But I dread it so!”
“Why, Beatrice! Dread beginning your work for Mr. Brook? I thought you were very happy about it.”
“So I am, in one way. I love him dearly already, I do, indeed. That is why I shall feel so anxious to please him exactly; and since I have been with him more I find he is rather—well, sort of—um-m—particular, you know! And I—I never could do anything alike twice. I’m excellent for spurts of energy and hap-hazard industry, but the regular, day-after-day, early-in-the-morning, late-at-night kind is what will try my soul.”
“And Isabelle is grieving herself half-sick over the ‘drudgery’ of housework! After all, I wish that our good friend had not been quite so explicit in his desires; for you don’t object to what tries Belle’s spirits, and she could do the mechanical part of your labor as well as you; the typewriting and note-taking, I mean.”
“Well, dear, it can’t be helped. Even you, I fancy, don’t find country housekeeping quite a picnic. It’s so much easier to run to the corner bakery for a loaf of bread than to make it one’s self. Oh! your girl has seen that wrinkly look come on your face, Motherkin, lots of times during this last week; and— Dear, are you sorry we came?”
“No,—no, indeed! Not in the least. I am foolishly sorry that I cannot make everything smooth for you all. It is up-hill work getting into a settled way of living; but the Beckwiths ‘never say die,’ and a little more patience is all any of us need, except Roland. He, it seems to me, is in no want of more. He is an example to me, and a revelation. He, certainly, has found his right place; and it should be all the reward any of his womenkind could desire to know that. I never saw a love of the country and all appertaining to it so marked in anybody. Listen to him now, whistling away! He has broken his plough; but instead of losing his temper over it he has gone to work to ‘tinker’ it up the best he can. And his poor hands, unused to manual labor, are blistered so that it must give him physical pain every time he touches anything. Oh, no, I cannot be sorry that we came.”