CHAPTER EIGHT
ITS MAKESHIFTS
As day followed day, with no return of the cause of their anxiety, the Greys began to breathe more freely. If Mrs. Grey felt less confident than the children, she hid her fears, and the girls rejoiced with the buoyancy of youth in their rescue from the great sorrow threatening them.
The autumnal equinox had passed, Prue had resumed school, and beautiful brooding days of golden sunshine, with their lengthening evenings, and the first touch of the cosey, shut-in feeling winter brings were resting over Fayre. Rob's brow did not match the brooding peace of nature. Over and over, with growing desperation, she said to herself: "I must earn money, I must earn money, but how?" Mr. Grey had thrown caution to the four winds—if he could have been said to have any to throw—and was working madly on his invention by day, and dreaming of it by night. Rob was in constant requisition to help him; she shared her father's excitement, and began to believe, with renewed faith, that they were on the eve of entering the land flowing with milk and honey. But the eve was dark and long, pointing, of course, proverbially to the nearness of dawn, but hard to live through.
The disaster the Greys had feared had befallen them; there was a temporary reduction in their income—so slender at best—owing to something going wrong with a railroad, in the queer, and, to feminine minds, mysterious ways investments have of behaving. It would be righted again one day, but in the meantime the reduction took the practical form of cutting down the simple family rations, leaving nothing for anything beyond necessities, very literally construed, and putting the Greys on a basis that really was, as Prue said, discontentedly: "Poor folksy." And Wythie and Rob did need winter coats so sadly! Their old ones were so shabby that Rob said she "was colder with it on than without it, for its whitened seams and many worn spots gave her chills."
"I give you fair warning, Wythie, I'm going to commit a felony," said poor Rob, coming home from a walk and trying to laugh as she tossed her hat on the old "nurse," as they called the shabby but comfortable couch which had cuddled them all as babies. "I feel a felony coming on, and it's as drawing as a felon."
"What form is it going to take, Rob?" asked Wythie.
"Stealing," said Prue, promptly. "I know I wanted to break in Roger's window to-day and take the chocolate eclairs he had put there—they looked perfect dreams, and were as fresh! Or else you want to fib," she added, thoughtfully. "No, though; you're not tempted as I am. It is simply awful when the girls ask you why you don't do this, or why you don't get that. What am I going to tell them?"
"The truth, that you can't afford it," said Rob, stoutly. "You might as well, for everybody in Fayre knows everybody else's affairs just a little better than they do themselves, so everybody knows we're poor—poor as pudding-stone rock. But there's one comfort; they all know, too, we're not every-day, pasture pudding-stone, but real old Plymouth Rockers, so mere money doesn't matter much—except to us. I don't suppose—since Mardy isn't here—there's any use in our pretending we don't mind the present pinching state of our finances."