The father came downstairs peering into the dining-room anxiously, with an apology on his lips for his eldest child.
“That’s right, Louie; I’m glad you let her sleep. She looked all wearied out last night with her long journey, and then I guess it’s been a kind of a shock to her, too.”
“I guess it has,” said the little girl comfortably, and passed him his cup of coffee and the bread-plate. They both had a sense of relief that Cornelia was not there and that there was a legitimate reason for not blaming her for her absence. Neither had yet been willing to admit to their loyal selves that Cornelia’s attitude of apathy to the family strait had been disappointing. They kept hoping against hope.
Mr. Copley finished his coffee hurriedly, and looked at his watch.
“Better let her sleep as long as she will,” he said. “She’ll likely be awake before you need to go to school; and, if she isn’t, you can leave a note telling her where to find things. Where’s Harry? Isn’t he up?”
“Oh, yes, he went to the grocery for the soup-bone he forgot to get last night. I was going to put it on cooking before I left. I thought maybe she wouldn’t know to——”
“That’s right! That’s right! You’re a good little girl, Louie. Your sister’ll appreciate that. Make Harry eat a good breakfast when he gets back. It isn’t good to go out on an empty stomach; and we must all keep well, and not worry mother, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” sighed the little girl with a responsible look; “I made him take a piece with him, and I’m saving something hot for him when he comes back. He’ll help me with the dishes, he said. We’ll make out all right. Don’t you worry, father, dear.”
The father with a tender father-and-mother-both smile came around, and kissed her white forehead where the soft baby-gold hair parted, and then hurried away to his car, thankful for the mother’s look in his youngest girl’s face; wondering whether they had chased it forever away from the eldest girl’s face by sending her too young to college.
It was to the soft clatter of pots and pans somewhere in the near distance that Cornelia finally awakened with a sense of terrible depression and a belated idea that she ought to be doing something for the family comfort. She arose hastily, and dressed, with a growing distaste for the new day and what was before her. Even the view from the grimy little bedroom window was discouraging. It was a gray day, and one could see there were intentions of rain in the mussy clouds that hurled themselves across the distant roof-tops. The window looked out into the back yard, a small enclosure with a fence needing paint, and dishearteningly full of rusty tin cans and old, weather-stained newspapers and rubbish. Beyond the narrow dirty alley were rows of other similar back yards, with now and then a fluttering dishcloth hanging on a string on a back porch, and plenty of heaped-up ash cans everywhere you looked. They were the back doors of houses of the poorer class, most of them two-story and old. Farther on there was an excellent view of a large and prosperous dump-heap in a wide, cavernous lot that looked as if it had suffered from earthquake sometime in the dim past and lost its bottom, so capacious it seemed as its precipitous sides sloped down, liberally coated with “dump.” Cornelia gave a slight shiver of horror, and turned from the window. To think of having to look at a view like that all summer. A vision of the cool, leafy camp where she had spent two weeks the summer before floated tantalizingly before her sad eyes as she slowly went downstairs.