“He has a heartache to-night, poor boy. Now, little nurse, mother’s tired. We will have prayer and go early to bed.”
III. “WAS THIS THE END?”
“The worst is not
So long as we can sing: This is the worst.”
—Shakespeare.
The two parlors were swept and dusted; Marion Kenney enjoyed the Friday sweeping; she stood in the center of the back parlor, cheese-cloth duster in hand, taking a satisfied survey of the two comfortable, old-fashioned rooms.
“Well, you are picturesque!” exclaimed a voice from the doorway of the back parlor.
With all her twenty-one years, Marion Kenney was girlish enough to give a swift, shy look the length of the rooms to the long mirror between the windows in the front parlor. But picturesque was only—picturesque.
“I don’t see what a girl has to dress herself in furbelows for,” he went on, ardently, and with evident embarrassment, “when there’s nothing more becoming than the housekeeping costume; you are as bewitching in that red sweeping-cap as in your most fashionable headgear.”