“That’s all right, darling; I think I’ll just run down and see him a minute; he’s so anxious about his little house, and it will reassure him if I explain about it. Tell him to wait just a minute till I slip on my dress.”
A chorus of protests arose from the bed.
“For mercy’s sake, Cornie, you’re surely not going down to see a man on business now! What on earth? Did you really get to be an interior decorator, after all? You don’t mean it! I thought you were just kidding when you wrote about it. What do you mean? They’re only poor people. Well, what do you care? You’re surely not going on with such things after you’re married?”
Cornelia, flinging the masses of her hair into a lovely coil, and fastening the snaps of her little blue organdie, smiled again dreamily.
“Arthur likes it,” she said. “He wants me to go on. You see we both regard it, not exactly altogether as a business, but as something that is going to help uplift the world. I’ve done two really big houses, and they’ve been successful; and I have had good opportunities opening, so that I could really get into a paying business if I chose, I think. But I don’t choose. Oh, I may do a fine house now and then if I get the chance, just to keep my hand in, for I enjoy putting rich and beautiful things together in the right way; but what I want is to help poor people do little cheap houses, and make them look pretty and comfortable and really artistic. So many don’t have pretty homes who would realty like them if they only knew how! Now, this man I’m going down to now is just a poor laborer; but he has been saving up his money to make a nice home for his girl, and he heard about me, and came to me to help him. I’ve been having the best fun picking out his things for him. I won’t get a great fee out of it; indeed, I hate to take anything; only he wouldn’t like that, but it’s been great! Arthur and I have been together out to see the little cottage twice, and arranged the new chairs for him; and I even made up the beds, and showed him how to set the table for their first meal. They are to be married next week, and he’s so worried lest the stuff I ordered for curtains won’t get here in time to finish his dining-room. But mother is going to finish them; and Harry and Carey will put them up; and I want to tell him, so he will not worry.” With a bright smile Cornelia left them, and flew downstairs to her customer.
“Goodness, girls! did you ever see such a change in any one? I can’t make her out, can you?” cried Jane, sitting up on the foot of the bed and looking after her.
“I should say not?” declared Pearl. “What do you suppose has come over her? I suppose it’s being in love or something, although that doesn’t generally make a girl do slum work at a busy time like this. But I guess we wasted our pity on her. She said she was coming home to a horrid, poor little house. Did you ever see such a pretty nest of a house in your life? That living room is a dream. I’m crazy to get back to it and look it over again.”
“Well, I never thought Cornie Copley would turn out to be that kind of a nut. Think of her going to the station to meet her mother-in-law just before the ceremony! Love certainly is blind. Girls you needn’t ever worry lest I’ll do anything of that kind, not me!” cried Natalie. “That man must be some kind of a nut himself, or else she’s been all made over somehow.”
Jane tiptoed, and shut the door; and then in a whisper she said: “Girls, I want to tell you. I believe it’s religion. It’s queer, but I believe it is. I heard her talking about praying for somebody down in the hall when I stood up here waiting for my trunk to be unlocked by her brother. She was talking to her little sister, and they both seemed to be praying for something or somebody; and she’s mentioned the church every other breath since we came, and the minister, and—look at there! There’s her Bible with her name in it. I opened it, and looked, and he gave it to her; ‘Cornelia from Arthur’; that’s what it says. And see that card framed over the table? It’s a Christian Endeavor pledge-card. I know for I used to belong when I was a child. She’s going to have the Christian Endeavor society all at the wedding, too. I heard her say the Christian Endeavor chorus was going to sing the wedding march before they came in, and she talks about the minister’s daughter all the time. You may depend on it, it’s religion that’s the matter with Cornie, not being in love. Cornie’s a level-headed girl, and she wouldn’t go out of her head this way just for falling in love. When religion gets into the blood it’s ten times worse than any falling in love ever. I wonder what her Arthur thinks of it. Maybe he means to take it out of her when he gets her good and tied.”
“Don’t!” said Ruth sharply. “You make me sick, Jane. I don’t care what it is that has changed Cornie. She’s sweet, I know; that’s all that’s necessary. And, if it’s religion, I wish we all had some of it. I know she looks all the time as if she’d seen a vision, and that’s what precious few other people do. Come, it’s time to take a nap, or we’ll look like withered leaves for this evening. Now stop talking! I’m going to sleep.”