"We mustn't rely on Uncle Thomas, Alma," she said presently. "We mustn't count on anything but what we can do for ourselves. Remember that, dear. We've got to realize that our lives must run a different course from those of richer girls—we can never do the things they do—but surely they will be richer lives, and happier lives, if—if we rely on no one, ask nothing from anyone, but what we earn"—her head went up—"never struggle for, or want the things that lie beyond our means, but make always the opportunities that lie within our grasp, or the ones that we can make for ourselves, serve as stepping stones."
Alma glanced at her sister's sober, handsome face. There were times when Nancy looked to her like some brave, gallant, sturdy lad, and there were times when she agreed with Nancy in spite of herself, and against her own inclinations.
"Here we are—home again. And if it isn't the snuggest, cosiest, most cheerful burrow between here and Melbrook, why"—Nancy strode gaily up the little brick walk with her long, boyish strides, and breaking into a laugh, finished, "I'll beard the Prescott himself—tower, donjon-keep and all!"
CHAPTER II
INSIDE THE COTTAGE
It was what Nancy called the pluperfect hour of the day; that is, of a rainy day. The curtains of the living-room were drawn over the windows, the mellow lamplight dealing kindly with their faded folds. The rain, which had brought with it an early autumn chill, beat rhythmically against the panes, and gurgled contentedly from a water spout, as if it were revelling in the fact that it had had the whole countryside to itself for four-and-twenty hours.
Alma had washed her yellow hair, and had built a fire to dry it by. Nancy, in her dressing-gown and slippers, with her own brown mane braided into a short, thick club, was icing the chocolate cake, helping herself generously to the scrapings in the earthenware bowl. Mrs. Prescott was embroidering. This was her greatest accomplishment, learned in a French convent. Knitting bored her to death, and darning drove her crazy, but she could sit by the hour stitching infinitesimal petals on microscopic flowers, and turning out cake mats, tea-cloths and fancy collars by the score. Faded only slightly by her forty-odd years, she was still an exquisitely pretty woman, with a Dresden-china face, marred ever so little by the fine lines which drooped from the corners of her delicate nose to the corners of her childish mouth. Her golden hair was barely silvered, her skin as fresh and rosy as Alma's, and her round little wrists, and pink-tipped fingers, Alma might have envied. The lacy dressing-gown she wore, which, at the slightest motion, shook out a faint little whiff of some expensive French perfume, struck an odd note in the shabby room, where the couch sadly displayed a broken spring, and not the most careful placing of furniture that Nancy could devise entirely concealed the holes in the faded carpet.
"We ought to put a glass cover over Mother, the way some people cover French clocks," Nancy said laughingly. "You're much too valuable to get any of the dust of every-day life on you, Mamma."
"I'm getting old, my dear. I only think of my daughters now," said Mrs. Prescott, with a little sigh and pushing a curly wisp of hair back from her face. "I shall be putting on spectacles soon."