“Of course on a sound business basis,” put in his wife.
“Oh, of course on a sound business basis,” repeated the proprietor of the store.
The three shook hands on it with unanimity.
XIX
With her materials and patterns laid out on the dining-room table, Mattie Farnham was trying to cut out a dress for her Margaret, an undertaking which was going jerkily because of the arrival, seriatim, of the children from school. They came in at different times, as suited their different ages and their rank in the hierarchy of grades. Little Jim in the first grade was free at two, Loren in the fourth was turned loose at three, and Margaret and Ellen appeared soon after four. The hour of the arrival varied, but the manner was identical: a clatter of hurried feet on the porch, the bursting open of the door, and the questing yell of “Mother! Mo‑o‑other!”
Mattie always answered with an “Oo-hoo!” on two notes, adding, “in the di‑i‑ining-room!” but she never waited for them to come to find her. She always laid down her work and all thought of it and hastened to give the returned wanderer a hug and kiss and run an anxious eye over his aspect to see what had happened to him during his day out in the world.
“Jimmy, you look tired. Did you eat your lunch good? Come on with me and get a piece of bread and butter.”
“Say, Mother, Teacher picked me out to say the good morning greeting to the whole school this morning at Assembly.”
“Did she? Which one did you say? Weren’t you scared? Say it to me. Let’s hear.”
A half hour later they would still be in the pantry, Jimmy swinging his legs from his mother’s cushiony lap, telling her between mouthfuls about everything that had happened in the long interval since he had seen her last. Mattie listened eagerly, stroking the hair back from the square white forehead, gloating greedily over the changing expressions on the little open, rosy face.
Then Jimmy wanted to know what she was doing and trotted back with her to the dining-room and had to have the nature of patterns explained to him, and hung over her as she worked, rumpling up the paper and getting in her way, his tongue and hers flying together.
Somehow it was time for Loren. Wherever had that last hour gone to? The crash of the opening door, the shrill whoop of “Mother! Mo‑o‑other!” And it all began again, this time with an exciting account of how Teacher gave Morton Cummings the awfulest calling-down you ever heard for copying off of Sadie Bennett’s paper. Both Jimmy and Mother were spellbound.
But Margaret’s dress did not progress very rapidly. At a quarter of four Mattie still had the sleeves to cut out, and she’d have to put her mind on them because she hadn’t bought enough dimity and they would have to be pieced under the arm. “Loren, you and Jimmy run out and play a while, won’t you, that’s good boys. Mother’s got to get this done.”
“Mercy! Evangeline Knapp would have had that dress all cut out and basted up. …”
And then, right out of a clear sky, came the unheralded thunderbolt of a new idea—how could it have come like that! She had not thought of the Knapps, not once all that day. She had been wrapped up in her work and in the children; yet the minute she had thought of Eva’s name … it was all there, as though she had been studying over them for weeks! Everything in her head had shucked together different, like when you look in a kaleidoscope and give it a shake, and there’s a new design. Why! Why! One thing after another came to her … how could it be she had never thought of it before? It was so plain now … why, yes!
The inquiring shout of Margaret and Ellen had no response. Surprised and aggrieved, they pushed on hastily in search of their mother and found her dropped into a chair by the dining-room table, her big scissors in her hand, her eyes wide and fixed. She answered them absently, she hardly looked at them, she never noticed that Ellen had lost her hair-ribbon, she interrupted Margaret’s account of how Maria Elwell’s petticoat had come off by jumping up and saying suddenly as though she didn’t even know that Margaret was talking, “See here, girls, I’ve got to run over to your Uncle Lester’s for something. You keep an eye on Jimmy, will you?”
What was the matter with Mother anyhow, Margaret and Ellen asked themselves over their four o’clock pieces of gingerbread. But they were not much worried. There was never very much the matter with Mother.
She hurried so that she was puffing as she went up the porch steps of the Knapp house—and yet when she opened the door she did not know why she had come nor what to say. Henry and Helen were just in also, enjoying cookies and milk and telling their father about the events of the day. The sight of the cookies gave Mattie her cue.
“Do those spice-cookies agree with Henry?” she asked.
“Sure they do,” said Lester. “Everything does nowadays! Henry seems to have grown right out of that weak stomach of his. He eats like a wolf, I tell him. The doctor says they do sometimes outgrow those childish things as they get near their teens.”
“Oh, yes, as they get near their teens,” said Mattie.
A moment later she asked, “Helen, aren’t you fatter than you used to be? Seems as though you were lots fuller in the face.”
“Did you just get around to notice that, Aunt Mattie?” said Helen, laughing. “You ought to see me trying to
