“MY SISTER, MRS. BERGHAM, HAS BEEN QUITE ILL,” EXPLAINED MISS MINGLE.
“I’m so ill and I’m afraid I’ve been quite selfish, demanding so much of sister’s time!” Mrs. Bergham said, extending a long white hand to the girls, and with her other removing a scarf from her shoulders, allowing it to drop to the floor. Miss Mingle immediately picked it up, folded it neatly, and laid it on the window seat.
“I’ve had rather a sad Christmas,” she went on. “Sister, it’s getting too warm in this room,” and, removing a pillow from under her head, she permitted that also to drop to the floor. Miss Mingle stooped and picked it up.
“There, there, dear,” said the latter, “I can’t let you talk about it. The girls will tell you all about their trip and you’ll forget the miserable aches and pains.” She puffed and patted the pillows on which her sister was resting.
Mrs. Bergham smiled languidly. “It’s so fine to be young and strong,” she said. “I have two small sons, and it made my Christmas so hard not to have them with me. But I couldn’t take care of them. They are such robust little fellows! Sister decided, and I suppose she’s right—she always is—that it would be best for me not to have the care of them while I am so ill.” She sighed and smiled patiently at Miss Mingle. “So we sent them away to school. I did so count on having them with me this holiday, but sister thought it would only be a worry; didn’t you, dear?”
Miss Mingle hesitated just the fraction of a second, then she answered cheerfully: “Mrs. Bergham is so nervous, and the boys are such lively little crickets, we didn’t have them home for Christmas.”
“Children are sometimes such perfect cares,” declared Tavia, feeling that something should be said.
“Then, too,” continued Mrs. Bergham, evidently greatly enjoying the opportunity to talk about herself to the helpless callers, “I’ve tried hard to add a little to our income. I paint,” she arched her straight, black eyebrows slightly. “Everything was going along so beautifully, although it is an expensive apartment to keep up, and I cared nothing for myself, I like to keep a home for my sister, and I worked and worked, and was so worried. Don’t you like this apartment? I’ve grown very fond of it.” She talked in a rambling way, but her voice was pleasing and her manner quite tranquil, so that Dorothy wondered how she said so much with apparently little exertion.
“The night the telegram came,” said Miss Mingle, “I thought she was dying, and I must say,” she laughed, “that that alone saved you naughty girls from receiving some horrible punishment.” They all laughed at the remembrance of that last night at Glenwood. “But when I got here,” continued Miss Mingle, “my sister was much better, and I was so relieved to find her just like her own dear self, when I had expected to find her—very ill—that I forgot everything, even having the boys home, so that sister’s fatherless sons had no Santa Claus this year.”