“Will you first listen to my little plan?” was her mother’s counter question.
“Yes, I’ll listen.”
“You know how I delight in fancy work, dear, and there is such a field for embroidery and other kinds I do so well. The Woman’s Exchange, you know.”
“You may do all you want to—yards, pounds, dozens, heaps—however it is described—but you must do it for our home, not other people’s. I’ll tell you what you may do, all against the coming climax, for it is coming, you mark my words: You begin right now and make dozens of the daintiest pieces of underwear imaginable—”
“Oh, Constance!” cried Mrs. Carruth, reproachfully, the softest rose creeping into her cheeks.
“Can’t help it!” protested Constance. “I know that co-ed plan will develop. My heart! Do you think I’m blind as a bat? When a man bids a girl good-bye at a railway station and helps her on board the smoking-car instead of the Pullman, and neither of them knows the difference—well. You just wait till spring, my lady. It is a case of ‘I smell a mouse, I feel him in the air,’ etc., get busy, Mumsey, get busy. The entire winter won’t be too long, I tell you; for when that explosion takes place it will be with a bang, you mark my words.”
“Connie, Connie, this is dreadful!”
“May be,” answered Constance, wagging her head dubiously; “but I’m afraid we must resign ourselves to it. Mercy only knows how she will come home at Thanksgiving. I believe he is to meet her. I’m prepared for a box car or even a flat car. Yes, it is dreadful, you are quite right. Wonder how it will affect me if I ever succumb? But take my advice, get busy, Mumsey, and, dear, remember this—” Swiftly the tone changed from the jesting one to the tenderest as the girl rested her head upon her mother’s shoulder: “You represent home to us girls. Without you it would be the harp without its strings, the organ without its pipes. It would disintegrate. Keep it for us. Try to feel that you are doing far more in our busy hive by just being our Queen Bee than you ever could by going abroad in the land to gather the honey. Let us do that, and remember this—I read it not long ago and I’ll never forget it:—
“‘The beautiful gracious mother,
Wherever she places her chair,
In the kitchen (this one) or the parlor,
The center of home is there.’
“Ready for me in there, Mary? Mother is perishing for occupation, and I’ve scolded her as much as I dare,” and, with a tender kiss upon her mother’s cheek, the girl ran swiftly into the next room.