By methods known only to himself, Dr. Ware saved furniture enough to make the place comfortable, while Bridget, who assumed mysterious airs for days before their departure, saw to it that there was no lack of household necessities. Bridget was no small factor in those days. She came to the front with tremendous energy, backed up her young mistresses in all their plans, and vowed she would never leave them. So the little family held together, which was the main thing, and the girls settled themselves in the new quarters with brave spirits—was not this, after all, the real meaning of “making a home for Dad”?
All the choicest things were brought to the furnishing of his room; the gayest pictures to relieve the tedium of the weary hours, his best loved books near at hand, though he could no longer read or even reach out his hand to touch them. In the window-sill Julie had set up a miniature conservatory of potted plants that promised to bloom gayly, for down upon them poured the morning sun, filling the room with golden light. This was their resting-place in the new life—their father the center about whom they gathered in every spare moment—the room a little shrine from which in the midst of their attendance upon him many a silent prayer for strength and courage went up to God.
The other sleeping-rooms were bedrooms by courtesy—mere closets, one of which was given to Bridget and in the other the girls managed to squeeze a double bed. Hester suggested that berths would be much more convenient, and only the lack of money prevented her having that sort of sleeping arrangement constructed.
“Julie!” she exclaimed, in the first days of squeezing themselves in, “it is something like living in the car again, isn’t it? only it is so—so different. I believe I’ll call the flat ‘The Hustle’—only instead of its hustling like the car, we’ll be the ones. Oh, Julie dear, to think of never racing around the country like that again!”
“Don’t Hester; I can’t bear to think of it.” In spite of her good resolutions Julie’s courage sometimes failed her.
A few days later Hester came into the kitchen one morning, her arms full of paper bags strongly suggestive of the corner grocery. “There!” she cried, “I’ve invested my last dollar in things for the cake.”
“Is it to-day you are going to see Miss Ware?” Julie asked.
“Yes, if the cake comes out all right. Roll up your sleeve, old girl, and we’ll begin.” Hester suited the action to the words by weighing the ingredients and turning the butter into a bowl. But ah! how hard it was to put her pretty hand into it—how greasy the butter felt and how sandy the sugar, and how unpleasant the general stickiness! But she worked it through her fingers energetically, while Julie beat the eggs.
“It is going to be death on our hands, my dear,” remarked Hester, picking up a knife with which she scraped the dough from her fingers.
“I wish you would always let me do that part, Hester. I know how you will feel it to hurt your hands.”