Louise danced up and down as she read it.
“O Nellie, Nellie, that’s real poetry!” she declared, “and aren’t we having a good time?”
“I should say we were!” declared Harry, beginning to make a large flourishing capital T with green and brown crayons. “Talk about dates!” contemptuously. “If a fella has got a good home, he oughtta stay in it!”
“O Nellie, it’s so good to have you home!” sighed Louise suddenly snuggling down into her sister’s tired arms. “I’m so glad your college is done!”
And all at once Cornelia realized that she too was glad. Here had she been nearly all this afternoon and evening, having a first-rate, beautiful time getting tired with hard work, but enjoying it just as much as if she had been working over the junior play. It came to her with a sudden start that just at this hour they were having one of the almost last rehearsals—without her! For a second it gave her a pang, and then she realized that she really and truly was just as much interested in getting Carey’s room fixed up, and making a cheerful, beautiful living room some day for the family to gather in, and having good times to win back Carey, as ever she had been in making costumes for the girls and making the play a success by means of her delightful scenery. For was she not, after all, about to plan the scenery for the play of life in the Copley family? Who should say but there would be as much tragedy and comedy and romance in the Copley play as ever there had been at Dwight Hall? Well, time would tell, and somehow the last twenty-four hours had put her on a different plane, and enabled her to look down at her college life from a new angle. What had done it? Her knowledge of how her father and mother had struggled and sacrificed? The dearness of her young brother and sister in their sturdy, honest desire to be helpful and to love her and look up to her? Or was it her longing to hold and help the young brother who had been her chum and companion in the days before she had gone to college? At least, she could truly say in her heart that she was glad she was here tonight, and she was not nearly so dismayed at the dreary house and the sordid surroundings as she had been twenty-four hours before; for now she knew that it only spelled her opportunity, as that lovely lady on the train had suggested, and she was eager to be up and at it in the morning.
They all went up together to the third story presently, and stood in the swept and garnished front room, Mr. Copley going over to the bureau and touching with a tender movement of caress the picture of his wife that stood there and then looking toward the empty white bed with a wistful anxiety. Cornelia could almost read the words of his heart, and into her own there entered the burden of her brother, and she knew she would never rest in her own selfish ease again until she felt sure that Carey was all right.
She crept into bed beside Louise at last, almost too weary to pull up the covers; and let the little girl snuggle thankfully into her arms.
“You’re almost—almost like my dear muvver,” murmured Louise sleepily, nosing into her neck and settling down on her sister’s arm with a sigh of content; and Cornelia thought how sweet it was to have a little sister to love and be loved by, and wondered how it was that she had dreaded having her for a roommate.
Then, too weary to think any longer, she fell asleep.
Hours afterward, it seemed, she was awakened by a stumbling footstep up the stairs, halting and fumbling about in the hall, and then going on, stumbling again, up to the third story. She heard a low muttering, too, and it frightened her. Had Carey been drinking? A strange, rank smell of cigarette smoke—and more—drifted into the door which had been left ajar; and a cold frenzy took hold of her heart. Carey had been drinking! She felt sure. A moment more, and she heard light footsteps from the little hall bedroom above, and Harry’s indignant young voice remonstrating, the sounds of a brief struggle, the thud of a heavy body on the bedsprings above, and then Harry’s voice coming clearly down the stairs in disgust as he pattered back to his hard little cot.