"Why, there's nothing to do to it," was Mrs. Morgan's prompt answer, "except to spread up the bed, and that takes Dorothy about three minutes. Besides, it is cold in there; you folks who are used to coddling over a fire would freeze to death. I never brought up my children to humour themselves in that way."
Louise, not wishing to enter into an argument concerning the advantages and disadvantages of warm dressing-rooms, resolved upon cutting this interview short.
"Very well, I shall spread up the bed then, if there is nothing else that I can do. Dorothy, remember that is my work after this. Don't you dare to take it away from me."
Lightly spoken, indeed, and yet with an undertone of decision in it that made Mrs. Morgan, senior, exclaim wrathfully, as the door closed after her daughter-in-law,—
"I do wish she would mind her own business! I don't want her poking around the house, peeking into places, under the name of 'helping!' As if we needed her help! We have got along without her for thirty years, and I guess we can do it now."
But Dorothy was still smarting under the sharpness of the rebuke administered to her in the presence of this elegant stranger, and did not in any way indicate that she heard her mother's comments, unless an extra bang of the large plate she was drying expressed her disapproval.
As for Louise, who will blame her that she drew a little troubled sigh as she ascended the steep staircase? And who will fail to see the connection between her thoughts and the action which followed? She went directly to an ebony box resting on her old-fashioned bureau, and drew from it a small velvet case, which, when opened, revealed the face of a middle-aged woman, with soft, silky hair, combed smooth, and wound in a knot underneath the becoming little breakfast cap, with soft lace lying in rich folds about a shapely throat, with soft eyes that looked out lovingly upon the gazer, with lips so tender and suggestive, that even from the picture they seemed ready to speak comforting words.
"Dear mother!" said Louise, and she pressed the tender lips again and again to hers. "'As one whom his mother comforteth.' Oh, I wonder if John could understand anything of the tenderness in that verse?" Then she held back the pictured face and gazed at it, and something in the earnest eyes and quiet expression recalled to her words of help and strength, and suggestions of opportunity; so that she closed the case, humming gently the old, strong-souled hymn, "A charge to keep I have," and went in search of broom, and duster, and sweeping-cap, and then penetrated to the depths of John's room; the development of Christian character in this young wife actually leading her to see a connection between that low-roofed back corner known as "John's room," and the call to duty which she had just sung—
"A charge to keep I have,
A God to glorify."
What, through the medium of John's room! Yes, indeed. That seemed entirely possible to her. More than that, a glad smile and a look of eager desire shone in her face as she added the lines—