“There!” exclaimed Katherine exultantly, when they were back home and Antha had been put to bed and fussed over. “Didn’t I tell you she’d develop a backbone if the right occasion presented itself? The only thing she needed to bring it out was responsibility. Responsibility! That’s the last thing anybody would have thought of putting on her. She’s been babied and petted all her life and told what a poor, feeble creature she was until she believed it. People expected her to be a cry-baby and so she was one. We made the same mistake here. We’ve never asked her to do an equal share of the work, or made her responsible for a single thing. We were always afraid she couldn’t do it. Now you see Aunt Clara made her responsible for that camera and took it for granted that she’d keep it dry and, of course, she did. I guess everybody would be a hero if somebody only expected them to.”
225CHAPTER XIII
OUT OF THE STORM
“Is there enough blue to make a Dutchman a pair of breeches?” asked Gladys, anxiously scanning the heavens. “If there is, it will clear up before noon.”
“Well, there’s enough to patch a pair, anyway,” said Katherine, pointing to a minute scrap of blue showing through a jagged rent in a gray cloud.
“A patched pair is just as good as a new one,” said Gladys with easy philosophy. “It’s all right for us to go for a hike today, isn’t it, Uncle Teddy?”
“Most any day is good for a hike, if you really want to go,” answered Uncle Teddy cheerfully. “Don’t I hear you girls singing:
“‘We always think the weather’s fine in sunshine or in snow?’”
“Oh, goody! I’m glad you think so,” said Gladys.
“Mother always wants us to stay at home if it looks the least bit like rain and when we do it usually clears up after it’s too late to start. We’ve all set our hearts on cutting those balsam branches today.”