Mrs. Knapp’s day had begun.
That evening after supper they had the comfortable game of whist which had come to be one of the family institutions of late. Lester had taught Helen and Henry how to play and after Stephen was in bed in his little cot, sociably close to them, they usually moved into the next room for a rubber. Evangeline thought that she thought it rather a foolish waste of time; but she did not demur, because she did not like to refuse poor Lester anything that would lighten his dreary life. She had liked to play cards in her youth and found that she had still quite a taste for the game. She played well, too, and usually held good hands. Henry had, it now appeared, inherited from her considerable “card sense” and with her as a partner, they more than held their end up. Lester and Helen, notoriously absentminded, often made fearful mistakes, which set them all into gales of laughter and advanced the cause of their opponents notably. One of the family jokes was the time when Lester, holding only one trump, had triumphantly led it out as a sneak lead!
“If it amuses Lester and the children. …” thought Evangeline, dealing the cards swiftly and deftly, and enjoying herself very much, she and Henry just now having won their third game in succession.
She did not know that they were all frightfully uneasy that evening. Stephen had been coming in and out of the house all day, and just the instant before Mother was expected, they discovered that on one occasion he must have climbed up on the sofa with his muddy rubbers! There were lumps of crumbling, drying mud all up and down it. They were wildly brushing it off when they heard Mother’s quick strong step on the porch and had scurried to cover. There were lots of lumps left yet. Suppose Mother should see them.
It was all right so long as they were playing whist. They had put Mother’s chair with its back to the sofa. But afterwards, when she and Father settled down to their evening of reading and studying, what would happen?
When nine o’clock struck, Helen and Henry stood up to start to bed. And Mother … oh! … after strolling about absently a moment she went and sat down on the sofa!
And never said a word. Never noticed a thing! Just sat there for a moment, thinking, and then jumped up to make a note in her store-book where she methodically put down her every idea! How was that for luck, their shining eyes said to each other silently, as the children kissed their father and mother good night, and went off upstairs.
It had come to her, right out of nowhere, as one’s best thoughts always come, that the thing to do with that black, fur-trimmed velours-de-laine cloak was to sell it to Mrs. Prouty in place of the fur coat which she coveted so and couldn’t possibly afford. It would actually, honestly, look better on Mrs. Prouty’s too-rounded dumpy figure than the fur coat. Her conviction was instantly warm! The earnest words came rushing to her lips. She heard herself saying fervently, “You see, Mrs. Prouty, a fur coat has no line. The only people who look well in one are the flat, long, bean-pole variety. But a well-cut, well-tailored coat like this … just see how that flat, strap trimming carries the eye up and down and doesn’t add to the bulk. And those great fur cuffs and collar give all the richness of the fur coat without the. …” Oh, she knew she could do it! She could just see Mrs. Prouty’s wistful eyes brightening, her anxious face softening into satisfaction and content.
And what a feather in her cap if she could be the one to work off that unsalable cloak!
Part III
XI
In the hurly-burly of the rearrangement of life, nobody had been able to pay much attention to Stephen, and he had reveled in this freedom from supervision. He had always steered his small, hard life on a line of his own, a line he strove to make parallel to the course of the rest of the family, and never intersecting. Contact with others always meant trouble in Stephen’s experience—except with Henry and Helen. Now that the grownups had almost forgotten his existence, he was enjoying life as never before, under his dirty, crumpled rompers, stiff with spilled egg-yolk and cold bacon grease.
His father’s accident had made no impression on his emotions. Events that did not touch Stephen personally never made any impression on his emotions. The only element in the new situation which interested him was that Mother seemed to have forgotten all about Teddy. This was important. It made Stephen very glad that Father had fallen off the roof and broken his legs all up, or whatever it was. As long as Father stayed in bed, he couldn’t bother anybody, even when he and Stephen were left alone.
For, after a time, they were left alone. When the sick man began to improve so that he was conscious, and later, occasionally out of pain, there were hours when the round of volunteer neighbors and helpers thinned out, when he was left in his bed in the dining-room, a glass of water, a book, something to eat and the desk-telephone on a table by his side, with instructions to telephone if he needed anything.
“Don’t you hesitate a minute now, Mr. Knapp,” said old Mrs. Hennessy heartily; “if it’s no more than to put a shovelful of coal on the kitchen fire, you call fourteen ring thirty-two and I’ll be
