MAUD departed for New York, radiant in new clothes and expectations of others. She set her house in order and gave Horatia a detailed list of instructions as to what to do on every usual occasion and in every emergency. And Horatia found a surprising pleasure in what she was to undertake. The Williams were to be gone two months and she would have full charge of everything. It would be interesting and stimulating to run a house and supervise the care of children. She liked Maud’s children and she liked the housemaid and the cook. It would be very easy and to Maud’s anxious worries she turned a laughing face and a competent spirit. She stood, with Jackie held by one hand and the baby in her arms, waving good-bye to their parents, and when the car was out of sight took her charges to the nursery with a delightful new feeling of personal responsibility.
After the flat, Maud’s house gave her a sense of expansion. To have her breakfast served daintily at a dining-room table was refreshing after months of getting up hurriedly and getting the milk and orange marmalade and rolls together herself. To come back at night to a comfortable house where there were two or three rooms into which she might wander instead of the small living-room of the flat was restful and to go up to the nursery was the most fun of all. The children were often in bed or just being put to bed by the housemaid and their smiles and chuckles at the sight of Horatia if she arrived in time to give them the finishing touches and tuck them in was one of the nicest happenings of the day. Their helplessness, their recognitions, their constantly growing intelligence, all fascinated her. Mingled with her natural love for them was wonder too and constant speculation. It was not unlikely that in a few years she might have children too, children for whom the responsibility would be always hers. She began to respect Maud, Maud being absent and non-irritant, for this achievement of two children. Two children brought into the world and preserved in perfect health. It was no slight thing. It was a big thing—a big success.
There was further speculation in her mind when she paid her sister’s bills. Dimly she had known that Harvey and Maud spent a great deal of money but she had not guessed how much. Their home was simple and it was not until she had checked over a great sheaf of bills which came in at the end of Maud’s first week of absence that Horatia found that the simplicity was the expensive result of many hands, many shops, many materials all blended smoothly together into a domestic interior. The total of the bills appalled her. She had laughed at Harvey’s insistence on leaving her a sum in the bank, which she declared “would last a year.” At this rate of expenditure she saw that it would possibly last the two months of her sister’s absence. The most unexpected things cost so much—in the kitchen and in the nursery. And a new speculation bordering on worry came to take the place of those first rapturous thoughts about her own children. She and Jim had figured on living on a sum which did not represent a tenth of what her sister was spending. Granted that she could save this and that and cut out this and that expense, could she even then—— She decided that she must ask Jim.
Jim came every evening when she did not go to the office. He was especially tender these days as if he were trying to completely and surely eradicate the scar which Grace had left on Horatia’s mind. They were beautiful, peaceful evenings with the house quiet and full of the spirit of the sleeping children, and sometimes they imagined that it was their house, that they were at home at last.
“Have you any idea how much this costs, Jim,” asked Horatia, “this peace and order and well-keptness?”
“I can only guess at it in horror.”
She told him and he whistled.
“Worse than your guess?”
“Yes.”
“I wish I had some money of my own,” said Horatia, regretfully. “We’ll have to devise ways of making The Journal pay better.”