CHAPTER XXIV
For three long, beautiful weeks Cornelia enjoyed her calm and hope climbed high.
The stone columns of the pretty front porch grew rapidly, and began to take on comeliness. Brand endeared himself to them all by his cheerful, steady, patient aid, coming every afternoon attired in overalls, and working hard till dark, getting his white hands callous and dirty, cut with the stones, and hard as nails. Once Cornelia had to tie an ugly cut he got when a stone fell on his hand; and he looked at her lovingly, and thanked her just like a child. From that time forth she gathered him into her heart with her brothers and sister, and began genuinely to like him and be anxious for his welfare. It seemed that his mother and sister were society people, and made little over him at home. He had his own companions and went his own way without consulting them; and, although he must have had a wonderful mansion of a home, he seemed much to prefer the little cozy house of the Copley’s, and spent many evenings there as well as days. He seemed to be as much interested in getting the stone porch done as Carey himself, and he often worked away alone when Carey felt he must stay at the garage awhile to get money enough for more stone or more cement and sand. Once or twice Cornelia suspected from a few words she gathered, as the boys were arguing outside the window, that Brand had offered to supply the needed funds rather than have Carey leave to earn them; but she recognized proudly that Carey always declined emphatically such financial assistance.
Now and then Brand would order Carey to “doll up,” and would whirl him away in his car to see a man somewhere with the hope of a position; but as yet nothing had come of these various expeditions, although Carey was always hopeful and kept telling about a new “lead,” as he called it, with the same joyous assurance of youth.
Brand, too, had been drawn into the young people’s choir, and took a sudden interest in Sunday-night church. Once he went with Cornelia, and found the place in the hymn book for her, and sang lustily at her side. The next Sunday he was sitting up in the choir loft beside Carey and acting as if he were one of the chief pillars in that church. It was wonderful how eagerly he grasped a thing that caught his interest. He had a wild, care-free, loving nature, and bubbled over with life and recklessness; but he was easily led if anybody chose to give him a little friendship. It seemed that he led a starved life so far as loving care was concerned, and he accepted eagerly any little favor done for him. Cornelia soon found that he grew pleasantly into the little family group; and even the children accepted and loved him, and often depended upon him.
Arthur Maxwell, too, had become an intimate friend of the family circle, and since Harry had come back from his trip to the mountains he could talk of nothing else but “Mr. Maxwell says this and Mr. Maxwell does that,” till the family began gently to poke fun at him about it. Nevertheless, they were well pleased that they had such a friend. He came down one day, and took Cornelia off for the whole afternoon on a wonderful drive in the country. They brought back a great basket of fruit and armfuls of wild flowers and vines. Another day he took her to a nursery where they selected some vines for the front porch, some climbing roses and young hedge-plants, which he proceeded to set out for her on their return. Then next day a big box of chocolates was delivered at the door with his card. But his mother had not been out for her promised visit yet; for she had been called away on a business trip to California the day after she reached home, and had decided to remain with her relatives there for a month or six weeks. Cornelia as she daily beautified her pretty home kept wondering what Mrs. Maxwell would say to it when she did come. But most of all she wondered about her own dear mother, and what she would say to the glorified old house when she got back to it again.
Great news had been coming from the sanitarium where the mother was taking the rest-cure. The nurse said that she grew decidedly better from the day the letter arrived telling how Carey was singing in the church choir and going to Christian Endeavor, and building a front porch. The nurse’s letter did not show that she laid any greater stress on any one of these occupations than on the others, but Cornelia knew that her mother’s heart was rejoicing that the boy had found a place in the church of God where he was interested enough to go to work. In her very next letter she told about the minister’s people, and described Grace Kendall, telling of Carey’s friendship for her. Again the nurse wrote how much good that letter had done the mother, so that she sat up for quite a little while that day without feeling any ill effects from it. Cornelia began to wonder whether Clytie had been at the bottom of some of her mother’s trouble, and to congratulate herself on the fact that Clytie had suffered eclipse at last.
About this time Maxwell arrived one evening while Carey was putting the finishing-touches to the front porch, and instead of coming in as was his custom, he sat down on a pile of floor-boards and talked with Carey.
Cornelia, hearing low, earnest voices, stepped quietly to the window and looked out, wondering to see Maxwell talking so earnestly with her brother. She felt proud that the older young man was interested enough in him to linger and talk, and wondered whether it might be politics or the last baseball score that was absorbing them. Then she heard Maxwell say: “You’ll be there at eight tomorrow morning, will you? He wants to talk with you in his private office before the rush of the day begins.”
In a moment more Maxwell came into the house, bringing with him a great box of gorgeous roses, and in her joy over the roses, arranging them in vases, she forgot to wonder what Maxwell and her brother had been talking about. He might have told her, perhaps, but they were interrupted almost immediately, much to her disappointment, by callers. First, the carpenter next door ran in to say he was building a bungalow in a new suburb for a bride and groom, and the man wanted to furnish the house throughout before he brought his wife home, to surprise her. The bride didn’t know he was building, but thought they would have to board for a while; and he wanted everything pretty and shipshape for her before she came, so they could go right in and begin to live. He didn’t have a lot of money for furnishing, and the carpenter had found out about it, and told him about Cornelia. Would she undertake the job on a percentage basis, taking for selecting the things ten per cent. say, on what they cost, and charging her usual prices for any work she had to do?