Groans followed from both of the younger girls, but Jean recovered speech quickly and wanted to know what Ray proposed to do with herself; did she mean to dress on the back porch, as well as sleep there? Then, dolefully: “Oh, Ray, your lovely big room, with all your college things in it! how can you?”
“Never mind, Jeanie,” the girl said, brightly. “Don’t you know how often we have said that mother and father ought to have that room? I could manage nicely with the little one back of it, but I was thinking—will it do, mother, to leave Aunt Elsie alone on the first floor?”
Mrs. Forman admitted that it might not be right for a lame person to sleep so far from others, yet she did not know how else to plan; that was certainly the only downstairs sleeping room, and there was no other that could be converted into one. Then Ray wondered if a couch could not be set up in the little trunk room if the trunks were moved to the attic; she believed the room was long enough on the south side for a cot, and, if so, she could sleep there and be within call.
Jean exclaimed: “Why, Ray Forman! that is nothing but a closet. The idea!”
“It has a wide window, Jean dear; I could sleep with my head out of doors if I chose; and think what a nice roomy place I should have upstairs, with the bed out of the way; I can do it nicely, mother, if you want to plan it so.”
Mrs. Forman sighed again, and said that Ray was doing, once more, what she had done ever since she was able to think and plan—sacrificing herself for others; she, the mother, ought to be used to it, but it did seem a pity that it must always be the same one on whom the burden fell heaviest. She arose from the table as she spoke, the others following her lead. Jean, as she clattered the cups and saucers, gathering them for the little maid in the kitchen, continued to express her mind, with no listener save herself. “All I have to say is that I think there are a lot of awfully selfish people in this world, and they don’t all live in this house, either. I just detest rooming with Florence, but, of course, I’ll do it, and mother knows I will; she needn’t think that Ray does all the sacrificing. If I were Aunt Caroline, or Uncle Evarts—which, thank goodness, I’m not—I should be ashamed to look any of us in the face after this.”
Nothing had occurred for months to upheave the Forman household as did this letter from Mr. Forman’s youngest sister. The family had grown accustomed, at least in a degree, to straitened means and careful economies. Mr. Forman’s failure in business had occurred when Jean, the youngest, was a mere child; yet she distinctly remembered the great house on Duval Circle, and especially the fine car in which she daily rode, attended by a maid. The others, of course, had vivid recollections of the refinements and luxuries, as well as of many things that they used to name necessities, that had to be given up when the crash came; but time had softened much of the bitterness connected with the change; they were even growing used to the small, plain house on Fourth Street and one untrained little maid, although they still never went in the vicinity of Duval Circle if it could be avoided; and Florence had not yet trained herself away from occasional outbursts over the changed conditions. These, however, were very rare in her father’s presence. She still remembered with remorse the day when, after an especially harrowing experience, she had burst forth with: “Oh, if father could only have been persuaded not to trust that horrid man who is responsible for all this” and then had heard a heavy book drop to the floor with a thud, and a deep groan from the father whom she had supposed was not in the house. A moment afterwards the door of the little reading room, which now served as his library, was quietly closed, and save for the look of unutterable reproach on her mother’s face as she closed it, no reference was ever made to the incident. But that groan had burned into her heart. Jean, under like circumstances, would have rushed into her father’s arms and fairly smothered him with kisses while she poured forth a volume of regrets and frantic promises never to do so again; she would also be liable to forget it all, before the day was done, and fail in exactly the same way. Florence was different. However, they all, in their differing ways, had for a central object in life the saving of their father’s feelings.
[CHAPTER II]
PREPARATION
MRS. FORMAN and her two daughters, Ray and Florence, were in the attic studying the possibilities of certain stowed-away pieces of furniture; also arguing as to the merits—or possibly demerits—of a set of old curtains.
Florence was sure that they would not do at all for Aunt Elsie’s room, although while she said it she was oppressed by the thought that new curtains were not even to be mentioned. Only that morning her mother had tried to impress them with the fact that even very small expenditures must be carefully guarded; they really must not for the present spend an unnecessary penny. It evidently comforted the poor lady to use that phrase “for the present,” although they knew she had a haunting fear that the future would not make the pennies more plentiful.