It was a Saturday morning, and she and Estelle were together in the latter’s attic studio. They were very often together now; a real intimacy had developed since the city experience.
I will admit that I sometimes felt a little shut out. And yet there is a satisfaction in the production of cheese and preserves, if you feel that you have a real talent in that direction, that I believe is scarcely inferior to that which one feels in the production of literature and art! Moreover, I didn’t refuse to accept the consolation that Octavia offered me. Better pictures and stories were being continually brought forth than either she or Estelle could ever hope to give to the world, she said, while no one could ever beat me at sage cheese or quince jelly!
I wondered whether, since the old house was built, anybody had ever carried a heavier burden up those attic stairs than “Evelyn Marchmont” was to me! I sat down upon the top-stair feeling that I could get no farther with my heavy heart and the dreadful package.
“I thought I saw Bathsheba coming from the office,” I heard Estelle say. “Perhaps we shall hear to-day.”
And then I steeled my nerves and went into the studio. I only hoped that Octavia would not weep. She seldom did, but when the tears came it was in a tempest. I stood speechless while Octavia looked at the package.
“Oh, Evelyn has come back!” she exclaimed, lightly. “I knew it would. You needn’t think I mind, Bathsheba! I’ve had all those pangs and gotten over them. I don’t need to be told now that I can’t do that sort of thing. But oh, Estelle, there is a letter for you! Do hurry and open it!”
She tossed the package carelessly upon the table, and watched Estelle, breathlessly, while she opened the letter. A thin strip of paper fluttered out, of a kind happily known to prosperous makers of cheese and preserves!
“We find your sister’s little stories charming,” read Estelle, in a voice that was half-choked with delight. “We enclose a check for the two first sent, and shall examine the others at once. The fact that they have been used in her kindergarten would not injure them at all for our use, and we should be glad to consider any others that she may have on hand. We recognize a new touch in them, and should be glad to have her submit a serial for our magazine to run for three or six months. Your very original drawings illustrate your sister’s work so strikingly that we prophesy for your work done in conjunction a real success, and should, indeed, be glad to have you give us the refusal of anything in our line that you may do.”
Oh, and then there was hilarity in the studio! We were none of us so very old, and, of course, one could not expect Estelle whose own affair this was, to take it very quietly.
“Only the little stories that I wrote for my kindergarten. Estelle would send them,” explained Octavia, with joyful tears. “Fancy their finding a new touch in them and prophesying a real success! See what they say!” she added, as I picked up “Evelyn Marchmont” from the floor where it had fallen.