Interrupted

by Pansy

It had not been difficult to get a promise from her to have nothing to do with the dreadful sales. "No, dear," she had said quietly, when Claire made her plea, "I will not try to help in that direction; I know that I should hinder rather than help. You can do it all, much better than I. You are like your father, my child; he always took the hard things, so that I did not learn how."

The very work with which the mother quietly occupied herself was pathetic. It had been their pleasure to see her fair hands busy with the bright wools, and silks and velvets of fancy work, such as the restless young schoolgirl was too nervous to care for, and the energetic elder daughter was too busy to find time for. It had been their pride to point to many delicate pieces of cunning workmanship, and say they were "mamma's."

"So different from most other mothers," Dora would say, fondly and proudly.

But on the morning that the sale commenced, the mother had gone over all the wools, and silks, and canvas, and packed them away with that unfinished piece of crimson; and thereafter, her needle, though busy, took the stitches that the discharged seamstress had been wont to take. Claire found her one day patiently darning a rent in a fast breaking tablecloth, which had been consigned by the housekeeper to the drawer for old linen. Scarcely anything in the history of the long, weary day touched Claire so much as this.

Such power have the little things to sting us! Some way we make ourselves proof against the larger ones.

There had been very little about the experiences of these trying weeks that had to be brought before the family for discussion. They were spared the pain of argument. There had not been two minds about the matter for a moment. Everything must go; the creditors must be satisfied to the uttermost farthing, if possible. That, as a matter of course. Never mind what the law allowed them. They knew nothing about the law, cared nothing for it; they would even have given up their keepsakes and their very dresses, had there been need, and they could have found purchasers.

But there had been no need. Disastrous as the failure had been, it was found that there was unincumbered property enough to pay every creditor and have more furniture left than they knew what to do with, besides a sum of money; so small, indeed, that at first poor Claire, unused to calculating on such a small scale, had curled her lip in very scorn, and thought that it might as well have gone with the rest.

There came a day when they were settled in those ridiculously small rooms, with every corner and cranny in immaculate order, and had reached the disastrous moment when they might fold their hands and do nothing. Alas for Claire! If there was one thing that she had always hated, it was to do nothing. She was almost glad that it was not possible for her to do this. The absurd little sum set to their credit in the First National Bank, of which her father had for so many years been a part, would barely suffice to pay the ridiculously small rent of these wretched rooms and provide her mother with food and clothing. She must support herself. She must do more than that: Dora must be kept in school. But how was all this to be done?

The old question! She had puzzled over it a hundred times for some poor woman on her list. She thought of them now only with shivers. Executive ability? Dear! yes, she had always been admired for having it.

But it is one thing to execute, when you have but to put your hand in your pocket for the money that is needed for carrying out your designs; or, if there chance not to be enough therein, trip lightly up the great, granite steps of the all-powerful bank, ask to see "papa" a minute, and come out replenished. It was quite another thing when neither pocket nor bank had aught for her, and the first snows of winter were falling on the father's grave.