The girls looked back on her reign, regretting that it was over. It was lovely to have their mother with them again but she was quite different from the mother they had known in Richmond in the luxurious days. That mother had always been gentle while this one had a little sharp note to her voice that was strange to them. It was most noticeable when she had expressed some desire that was not immediately gratified.
“I am quite tired of chicken,” she said to Douglas one day. “I wish you would order some sweetbreads for me. I need building up. This rough life is very hard on me and nothing but my being very unselfish and devoted makes me put up with it.”
“Yes, mother! I am sorry, but my order for this week is in the mail and I could not change it now, but I will send a special order for some Texas sweetbreads to Charlottesville. I have no doubt I can get them there.”
Either the order or the sweetbreads went astray. Mrs. Carter refused to eat any dinner in consequence and sulked a whole day.
“If she only doesn’t complain to father we can stand it,” Douglas confided to Nan. “What are we going to do, Nan? I am so afraid she will make father feel he must go back to work, and then all the good of the rest will be done away with. She treats me, somehow, as though it were all my fault.”
“Oh no, honey, you mustn’t feel that way. Poor little mumsy is just spoiled to death and does not know how to adapt herself to this change of fortune.”
“You see, Nan, now that Mr. Lane has had to go to Texas with the militia the business is at a standstill. He was trying to fill the orders they had on their books without father’s help.”
“Yes, Mr. Tucker said that father’s business was a one man affair and when that one man, father, was out of the running there was nothing to do about it. Thank goodness, father is not worrying about things himself.”
“I know we should be thankful, but somehow his not worrying makes it just so much more dreadful. I feel that he is even more different than mother. It is an awful problem—what to do.”
“What’s a problem?” asked Helen, coming suddenly into the tent where her sisters were engaged in the above conversation.