She moved to the cashier’s desk to pay for her breakfast, for she took her breakfast downtown, as the easiest way to manage things at home in the morning. The children didn’t need to be off to school until an hour after she left the house, and this plan left them more time to get their breakfast without hurrying. The cashier gave her a pleasant good morning as he handed over the change, and asked how all the family were that morning. Everybody in town knew what troubles Mrs. Knapp had, and how brave she was about them. As he asked the question he was thinking to himself, “Nobody ever heard her complain or look depressed—and yet how forlorn for a homebody such as she had always been to get her breakfast in a cafeteria like a traveling-man!”
“Mr. Knapp is really pretty well,” she answered cheerfully; “he gets about in his wheel chair wonderfully well, considering. Takes care of himself entirely now, even dressing and undressing. And the children are splendid. So helpful and brave.”
“Your children would be!” said the cashier, who was a distant relative of Miss Flynn’s. But he really did admire Mrs. Knapp very much. Evangeline smiled to acknowledge the compliment, which she took very much as a matter of course. That was the kind of thing everyone always said to her. She corrected the smile with a sigh and said earnestly, “Of course it is dreadfully hard for a mother to be separated from her children; but we all have to do the best we can.”
“Oh, yes, dreadfully,” agreed the cashier sympathetically. Mrs. Knapp had made the same remark to him several times before, but he was used to that. Customers always repeated themselves. It was part of the business not to notice it. She went on now, repeating herself again, and he listened with his usual patience. “The hardest part for me was to make up my mind to let things go at the house. If I do say it, I’d always done my duty by my housekeeping.”
The cashier murmured his usual ejaculation of assent.
“Dr. Merritt had just put his foot down that I was not to do one thing at the house after I got home from the store. But you know how it is, you can’t help yourself when you see all there is to be done. I used to turn right in those first weeks and clean house every Sunday from morning till night. But I had to give it up. I found I was no good at the store on Mondays, unless I got my rest. And of course, that. …”
“Yes, of course that!” acquiesced the cashier.
“So now I just look the other way and think about something else,” she said bravely, bestowing the change in her purse.
The cashier nodded as she turned away, noticing that she folded her morning paper and put it under her arm with the exact gesture of any other businessman.
He had sent her away, as he had intended, well satisfied with life, and as she walked along to her work, she was turning over in her mind some of the reasons for her satisfaction. The children were coming along splendidly, she thought, remembering lovingly how sweet they had looked this morning as she kissed them goodbye; Helen still in her petticoat, combing her hair, turning a freshly washed, rosy face up towards her tall mother; Henry pulling on his little trousers and reading out of that absurd conundrum book Lester had borrowed of Mattie for him; Stephen poking his head out from under Lester’s bedclothes like a chicken sticking its downy crest through the old hen’s wings! Stephen slept downstairs, beside his father’s bed, in a little cot that slipped under Lester’s bed in the daytime. He was always scrambling into bed with Lester in the morning. As she dressed upstairs, she often heard their voices, talking and laughing together. Lester had of course plenty of time for that sort of thing, since he did not have to hurry about getting an early breakfast for anyone. And Stephen seemed to have passed a sort of turning-point in his life and was much less troublesome than he had been. Mattie Farnham had always said that perhaps Stephen would just outgrow those naughty spells! She said children often did between five and six.
As always she was the first of the selling force in at the doors of the Emporium and the first in her department. She loved this tranquil taking possession of the day’s work. It was one of the reasons why she breakfasted at the cafeteria. She liked to check up on all the necessary, before-opening-time activities, and be sure they were all finished in good shape by the time the first customer came in. This was not really her business of course, but as she always willingly lent a hand, the stock-girls and cleaning women did not object. This morning she found that the stock-girls had not finished taking off the covers, and at once began to help, reminding the stock-boy over her shoulder about the thorough morning airing which Mr. Willing thought so important.
What a wonderful man he was! It was an education to work
