Julia watched the sisters with deep admiration; they were all tired, she knew, yet vigorous ablutions went on in the cold little bathroom, and clothes were brushed and made ready for to-morrow's need. Their joyous talk was pitifully practical, Mary raising the dread topic of new shoes for Stephen, the youngest, and Kennedy somewhat ruefully conceding that the shoes must be had, even at the cost of the needed gallon of olive oil.
"No salads for a month, and they're so cheap!" she mourned. "And that young terror seems to me to need shoes every week! Don't ever have sons, Miss Page, they're a heart scald wid the bould ways av thim! Stephen had nine pairs of shoes in eight months—that's true, isn't it, 'Lizabeth? For we were keeping accounts then—while Dad's will was in probate, we had to."
"A good thing to have a will to fall back on," said Julia.
"Even if we only inherited one hundred and sixteen dollars apiece," 'Lizabeth added.
"Dad had had losses—it wasn't any one's fault—everything went to smash," Kennedy supplemented instantly. "And of course when we found that Steve had been braking his coaster with his feet, that helped. But me—I'm going to have only girls—five darling little gray-eyed girls with brown hair!"
"I'd like a boy to start off with," 'Lizabeth said. "He could take his sisters to parties—"
"Yes, but they never do; they take other girls to parties!" the fifteen-year-old Mary said suddenly, and the older girls laughed together at her sapience.
"Peter has a girl," Kennedy said. "But naturally he won't desert the bunch. Next year, when some bills we simply couldn't help—"
"Doctor and nurse when George and Mary had typhoid," 'Lizabeth explained.
"—are paid off," Kennedy continued. "Then, if he still likes her, he might. But he never stays in love very long," she ended hopefully.