Treasured Brides Collection (43 page)

“Yes, I know,” said Janice sympathetically. “Mother read about it in the papers. You know, he’s the president of our bank, and we were interested—” Then she stopped suddenly and realized that was something she should not have spoken about.

“Oh,” said Elise, with sudden trouble in her eyes. “Were you among the people who lost all their money through us? Oh, I’m so sorry—”

“Don’t worry,” said Janice, trying to laugh it off cheerfully. “We didn’t have much there to lose. Mother had just had to draw almost all of it out to make the last payment on our house.”

“How fortunate!” said the other girl. “But Father says he hopes everybody is going to get back all they lost in a little while. As soon as he gets stronger, he’s going to try and do something about it; I don’t know what. But oh, I hope you’ll get yours soon.”

“Oh, I don’t think there was enough there to matter,” laughed Janice again, wishing she hadn’t said anything about it. “What’s this about the problem? Do you mean the one about the pumps? Why, you divide the quotient by nine, don’t you see?” And Janice opened her book, and the two girls walked slowly along with their heads together over the algebra.

“Oh yes, of course, how stupid of me!” said Elise at last. “My, I’m glad I asked you. Now it won’t take me ten minutes to get my work finished for morning, and I can go papering right away before dark. The man who sold us the paper told us a little about putting it on, but I’m scared to death about the ceiling. He told us to get a new dust brush and smooth it ahead, down the middle of a strip of paper, but he warned me it was hard to keep it on, and hard to go straight. I’m afraid I’ll make a mess.”

Janice laughed.

“It is hard till you get used to it. The first time I ever put any paper on a ceiling, it came down behind my shoulders just as fast as I put it on. And when I got to the end of the strip, I was all wound up in it. Oh, I was a mess.”

The two girls laughed over this and Elise made a wry face.

“I expect I’ll make a mess of the whole thing,” she said, “but I’ve got to try. For my mother was going to do it herself, and I can’t have her getting up on chairs and stepladders and breaking her hip or something. My mother put on some wallpaper once, when she was a young married woman.”

“Well, mine didn’t, because she didn’t have to then; they were well off. But she had to later when we lost all our money, and Natalie and I have been brought up to do everything that we could. If we didn’t make things, we didn’t have them. But it’s kind of fun to make things and do things like papering, don’t you think?”

“Sometimes,” laughed Elise. “I’ll tell you better when I get this paper on the wall. I wish you could come in and sort of coach me.”

“But I’ve got to hurry right home. Mother has been doing some fine sewing for a woman and she wants it before five o’clock, so I must take it. But if there’s anything else I can do to help later, I’d love to.”

“Thank you,” said Elise. “I may call on you yet. By the way, why don’t you come over and see me? We’re rather near neighbors, aren’t we?”

“Yes, we are,” said Janice consciously, as if she had considered the matter before but hadn’t expected it to be recognized. “I’d love to sometime, if I can get the time. You see—well, we’re pretty busy, all of us, most of the time. Since my sister got the position in the grocery store, I have to take her place getting dinner and doing a good deal of the housework, because Mother has been sick, and she really isn’t able to do the housework and her sewing, too. And we really need the money from her sewing.”

“Well, we’re busy at our home, too,” said Elise frankly. “I’ve got a job taking care of kids three times a week, so now I am proud to say I rank in the laboring class, too. I guess I’ve been pretty useless most of my life, but I’m trying to make up for it now as well as I can. You know, you don’t realize when you don’t have to what a difference it makes. But honestly, I think it’s kind of fun.”

Janice looked grave.

“Well,” she said sadly, “it’s fun sometimes, of course, to put up with things and try and make ends meet. But when someone you love is very sick and there isn’t enough money to get the fruit and things all get snarled up, it isn’t so much fun.”

Elise looked at her speculatively.

“I like you,” she said suddenly. “I wish we could be friends. I don’t know why we haven’t been before.”

“I’ve always liked you,” said Janice, grinning, “but I never had time for being friends with anybody. It’s nice to know you want to be friends though, and I’d love it.”

“Well, let’s go to school tomorrow together,” proposed Elise. “What time do you start? I’ll wait in the house till I see you pass our corner.”

“All right!” said Janice, with dancing eyes, “I’d love that. I’ve never had anybody to walk to school with since Natalie finished high school.”

“Well, you have now,” said Elise, reaching out impulsively and squeezing Janice’s hand. “It’s going to be nice. I’m glad.”

The two girls parted happily, and Janice hurried home eagerly.

“Mother, what do you think?” she cried as she burst into the house. “Elise Walton ran after me and asked me to help her with her algebra, and she wants to be friends. Do you suppose her brother made her do that? She was really pleasant and lovely about it, as if she meant it.”

“Then I wouldn’t question it, dear,” said her mother, looking up wearily from her sewing. “Did you like her?”

“Oh, she was lovely,” said Janice. “And Mother, she isn’t the least bit snobbish. She and her mother are going to paper a room this afternoon. She says her mother used to do it when she was first married. I was telling her about putting on ceilings, how careful you had to be.”

Mrs. Halsey looked surprised.

“Are they really as hard pressed as that, I wonder?” she said. “I’ve heard Mr. Walton has been most honorable about giving up his property, but I did not suppose it would really bring them down to doing such things for themselves. It must be very hard for them.”

Then after a moment of thought—“I wonder if they have a roller to make the seams smooth? Suppose you take ours with you and go around that way when you take Mrs. Graves’s night dresses home. It certainly would be easier for them to have one, and if they own one, it can’t do any harm to offer a little neighborliness.”

So Janice hunted up the roller they used in their paperhanging and started joyously on her errand.

Elise found her mother up in the room they were to paper, wearing an old dress, with her sleeves rolled up and a pretty good imitation of scaffolding rigged up with the ironing board, the kitchen table, and two chairs. She had just finished cutting the last length of ceiling paper as Elise burst into the room.

“Mother! Where are you? You haven’t broken your promise and begun, have you? Oh, Mother! You carried up that kitchen table all by yourself!” she cried.

“No, I didn’t. Chris ran home a little while ago to get his overcoat instead of his sweater. The store is sending him in town on an errand, and he was afraid he would be cold. He brought the table up for me. And go look in my room and see what a nice pasting table I’ve got fixed up, with the two cutting tables and some boards I found in the cellar. No, I didn’t carry them up either. I got that little Jimmy next door to bring them for me when he came home at noon, and I gave him ten cents and a big red apple to pay for doing it. Hurry up and let’s get at this. The paste is all ready.”

While Elise changed into an old dress, she talked.

“Well, Mother dear, I scraped up a friendship with the sister of Chris’s girl,” she announced as she slipped out of her pretty school dress.

“Oh, my dear! I don’t know that I would call anyone Chris’s girl on so slight a foundation. Surely if she meant anything special to Chris, he would say something about it to your father and me.”

“I wonder!” said Elise, meditatively.

“I’m quite sure he would,” said the mother, as if she wished to convince herself.

“Well, anyhow, I liked her a lot, the sister I mean,” said Elise. “I guess she’s been lonely. She didn’t say so, but she seemed very glad that I wanted to be friends.”

“Is she—refined, dear? I don’t mean, of course, that we should despise her if she isn’t—but—well, you know what I mean. I wouldn’t like Chris to be interested in bold, forward girls—or coarse ones.”

“She’s not any of those things, Mother. Really, she’s nice. I’m sure you would call her refined. She has a low, sweet voice and a way of looking straight at you, quietly, and waiting for you to speak, instead of rushing in as if she knew it all.”

“Well, that sounds good. But you don’t know about the other sister, do you? This one is the youngest. The other may be different.”

“Yes, I found out about the other one. I don’t suppose you’ll like it, but—well—she works in the grocery store!”

The mother turned around and faced her daughter, an anxious, thoughtful look upon her face. “You don’t say!” she said, perplexed. “Of course that might explain the bundles. Chris may be only showing kindness to a fellow workman. But—it is so easy for people thrown together that way to get interested in each other when they’re not truly congenial. I should hate to have Chris spoil his life by getting attached to a common girl. But still, it does seem as if Chris would have sense about it. I am sure he has fine ideals.”

“Of course, Mother. He has. I wouldn’t worry. And—it may not be anything but a little kindness as you say. I don’t see, Motherie, why you can’t just trust things like that to God. You trust a lot of other things just as big.”

Mrs. Walton looked at her daughter with a startled glance. Elise was not one to speak much of God. She wondered if she had been giving a poor witness.

“I suppose I should,” she said, with a smile. “One forgets at times when a new peril looms that life is not all in our own hands to plan for. Elise, dear, wasn’t that a knock at the door? Can you run down, or shall I?”

But Elise was already on her way.

She opened the door, and there stood Janice with the little roller.

“Mother thought you might not have a roller and would like to use ours,” she said, half shy again before this girl whom she had held in awe so many years.

“Oh, how wonderful! It was darling of you to think of it. No, of course we never even knew there was such a tool. How do you use it? Won’t you come in just a minute and show me? Come upstairs and meet my mother. She’d love it. No, I won’t keep you but a second, but I do want you to know my mother, and then you can show us how to use this cute thing.”

So, much against her will, Janice consented to go upstairs.

“It’s Janice Halsey, Mother,” called Elise as they mounted the high, narrow stairs. “She’s brought us the darlingest little roller to use on the seams of the paper. Wasn’t that lovely? Her mother sent it over.”

“Oh, a roller!” said Mrs. Walton, coming cordially to the head of the stairs. “How nice! I used to have one, long years ago. I don’t know what became of it. Janice Halsey, I’m glad to meet you, and it was very kind of you to be so thoughtful for us. Won’t you thank your mother for me?”

Janice didn’t stay but a minute or two, and when she was gone, Elise came back and got to work in earnest.

“Didn’t you like her, Mother?” she asked as she watched her mother looking out the window after the departing Janice.

“Yes,” said the mother, returning with satisfaction from the window, “very much. Of course, one can’t judge a person in a minute or two, but she seems well bred. I was watching her walk. She moves with a natural grace. Now, that Anna Peters swags. She can’t take a step without swaggering, and when she stands with her slinky coats wrapped around her hips, she looks like a half a hoop. One wonders why her legs don’t break off somewhere around the knees, with the balance of her body utterly destroyed as it is. And she goes around smoking on the street and in her car. I’ve seen her. She’s a bold hussy!”

Elise laughed cheerfully.

“Oh, Motherie, you’re so funny when you don’t like someone. Anna Peters does that on purpose. It’s the fashion, Mums, to stand that way, all slunk back.”

“Well, don’t you ever let me catch you standing that way!” said her mother firmly. “Now, this little Janice is a lady. She must have had a well-bred mother.”

“Janice says her mother never used to have to work,” said Elise, thoughtfully. “Isn’t it strange how people and circumstances just change when they get ready, and you can’t do anything about it? You just have to do the best you can?”

“I suppose, dear, that God plans it all,” said her mother with a sweet trustfulness.

“Well, if you believe that, why do you ever worry, Motherie?”

Mrs. Walton was silent a moment again, and then gave her daughter a sweet smile.

“I oughtn’t ever to, ought I?” she said. “Well, I don’t mean to, but sometimes I just forget what a great God we have. Now, dear, shall we get back to work? I’m quite pleased to have you know that sweet child, and someday, perhaps, we’ll go and see the mother. I just hope the older sister is as possible.”

It was only a few days later that a tall, rough-looking man came into the store and bought a pound of cheese and a box of crackers.

Chris waited on him and noticed a long jagged scar across one cheek. He noticed, also, that he walked about the store, stared at the cash window a good deal, and waited until Natalie was at liberty. Then he pushed his check and the money in. Chris saw his lips move in a remark and twist in an ugly, familiar laugh. Chris felt his anger rise, but he had to turn to his next customer, a fussy old lady who wanted to inspect every orange he put in the bag for her. When he looked up, the man was just sauntering out the door, with a leer and a grin back at Natalie, who had looked away from the door with deep annoyance in her eyes. Chris wondered what was familiar about the sag of his shoulders as he went away, and it was not until later in the day that it occurred to him, and he thought about the bum on the street corner and mentally compared the two. Had that fellow turned up again and hunted out Natalie to annoy her? He felt an undercurrent of worry all the afternoon.

It was a busy day, and Chris had no time to think much. The manager let most of the men go early that night.