“Eyes can’t be mellow, Dorrie, try something else.”
“Well, they are mellow just the same—tender and nice, aren’t they, Tommy?”
And Tommy would always agree that they were. But they were full of trouble now, as Jean hurried around the house, following Rebecca’s direction. Rebecca really did herself proud as chief of operations. Mr. Craig’s rooms were immaculate and as clear of nonessentials as the deck of a battleship. Under her orders the girls worked hard, Tommy ran all the errands she demanded, while Lydia, the Hungarian maid who came in by the day, regarded her with silent, wide-eyed admiration.
“We’d never have managed without you, Rebecca,” Jean declared when the final day arrived, and they all gathered in the long living room, listening for the hum of the car up the drive. Doris and Tommy were curled up on the wide window seat. Kit paced back and forth restlessly, and Jean sat with her legs dangling over the arm of her father’s lounge chair before the open fireplace. She was watching the curling flames.
“Land, child, I don’t see what you want to burn open fires for when you run a good furnace,” Rebecca had demurred.
“I know it isn’t necessary,” Jean answered, getting up from the chair to poke at the fire already blazing steadily, “but it’s consoling to watch an open fire. Don’t you think so, Becky?”
Rebecca sat in the old-fashioned pine rocker, placidly knitting on a sweater she was making for Tommy.
“We must all hope for the best,” she said, beaming at the anxious faces. “Doris, for pity’s sake stop that silent drizzling. If your father were to walk in now, he’d certainly be discouraged to look at you. I feel just as badly as any of you.” She took off her glasses, that were always balanced halfway down her nose, and reminisced, “Land, didn’t I live with him for years after his mother died? That was your own grandmother, Doris Craig. I’ve still got her spinning wheel up home in the attic. But I always did say we made too much woe of the passing over of our dear ones. And for heaven’s sake, your father not gone yet. Smile, even if your hearts do ache, and cheer him up. Don’t meet him with tears and fears. Jean, run and tell Lydia to keep an eye on that beef tea while I’m here. It has to keep simmering. Kit, can’t you keep still for a minute, or does it ease your mind to keep pacing?”
So she encouraged and cheered them, and when the car came up the driveway to the porch steps with Mr. and Mrs. Craig, the four children did their best to look happy. Mr. Craig, wrapped well in the automobile robe, waved to them, his lean, handsome face showing an eagerness to be with them once more.
“Hello, my dears,” he called to them. “Becky, God bless you, give me a hand. I’m still rather shaky.”