“Doll’s house!” interposed the girl laughingly. “But, O dear, I must be careful, for when I called it a doll’s house while Mrs. Morton was here she looked rather queer, and then I remembered that her house is not much bigger. But do you know, Mother,” she rattled on girlishly, “I think we are going to be quite comfy in this little home—after a time of course,” she hastened to add, “when we have become used to the change—and all—” she stopped abruptly, for she, too, was thinking of the dear father who had gone so suddenly—without even saying good-by, as she had so often wailed in the darkness of night—leaving Mother with only a meager income, and with poor Dick to take care of, and her and Dorothy, who didn’t know enough to earn a penny!
A sudden slam of the door was heard, a “How are you, Auntie?” in a sweet, assured voice, and then with smiling eyes a tall, graceful, young woman, with shiny, fluffy hair came forward and kissed her aunt caressingly.
“Oh, Lucille, what do you think?” broke from Nathalie impetuously; “I found a nest of tiny bluebirds down in the old cedar-tree on the lawn!”
“Um-m, well, you are always finding something to enthuse over,” remarked her cousin with careless indifference, “but I wish you would make that all-round maid of yours do my room, I want to write a letter.” There was spoiled impatience in the girl’s voice.
Mrs. Page looked up with a startled expression as she murmured apologetically, “Oh, I forgot, Lucille. I will do it—I thought—”
“No, no, Mother,” came from Nathalie hurriedly, as with heightened color and gentle insistence she forced her mother back to her seat. “I will do it.”
Nathalie disappeared within the door. She had smiled sweetly for her mother’s sake, but as she went up the stairs there was an upward lift to her chin that showed that she had a will and a temper of some weight. “Why is Lucille so mean,” she questioned mutinously, “as not to make her own bed when she knows that now we shall have to get along with only one maid? Mother is not going to wait on her!” Her eyes gleamed with angry decision, and then the curves of her mouth softened as she struggled silently with her jarring thoughts.
Yes, it must be borne, for was it not a part of the great change that had come into her life with her first great sorrow? The shock of her father’s death had dazed her, and she had suffered in a dulled, uncomprehending way until she was aroused from her grief by the many anxieties and disappointing changes that the financial tangle of her father’s affairs had caused.
Leaving their beautiful city home, giving up the many luxuries and the pleasures to which she had been accustomed, parting from her school friends, and coming to the unknown suburban town were bitter disappointments; the one that cut the deepest was giving up college, but the hardest to bear was Dick’s accident!
The next moment the girl was hard at work picking up Lucille’s disordered room, humming cheerily as she went about her task, for, after all, her cousin was independent—she paid her board—and now they would need every penny.