Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp | Page 6

the washing and cleaning each week.
It was one of Mrs. Sherwood's many virtues that she bore with a smile recurrent bodily ills that had made her a semi-invalid since Nan was a very little girl. But in seeking medical aid for these ills, much of the earnings of the head of the household had been spent.
The teakettle was singing when Nan entered the "dwelling in amity", and her mother's low rocker was drawn close to the side- table on which the lamp stood beside the basket of mending.
Although Mrs. Sherwood could not at present do her own laundry- work, she insisted upon darning and patching and mending as only she could darn and patch and mend.
Mr. Sherwood insisted that a sock always felt more comfortable on his foot after "Momsey" had darned it than when it was new. And surely she was a very excellent needlewoman.
This evening, however, her work had fallen into her lap with an idle needle sticking in it. She had been resting her head upon her hand and her elbow on the table when Nan came in. But she spoke in her usual bright way to the girl as the latter first of all kissed her and then put away her books and outer clothing.
"What is the good word from out of doors, honey?" she asked.
Nan's face was rather serious and she could not coax her usual smile into being. Her last words with Bess Harley had savored of a misunderstanding, and Nan was not of a quarrelsome disposition.
"I'm afraid there isn't any real good word to be brought from outside tonight, Momsey," she confessed, coming back to stand by her mother's chair.
"Can that be possible, Daughter!" said Mrs. Sherwood, with her low, caressing laugh. "Has the whole world gone wrong?"
"Well, I missed in two recitations and have extras to make up, in the first place," rejoined Nan ruefully.
"And what else?"
"Well, Bess and I didn't have exactly a falling out; but I couldn't help offending her in one thing. That's the second trouble."
"And is there a 'thirdly,' my dear?" queried little Mrs. Sherwood tranquilly.
"Oh, dear, yes! The worst of all!" cried Nan. "The yellow poster is up at the mills."
"The yellow poster?" repeated her mother doubtfully, not at first understanding the significance of her daughter's statement.
"Yes. You know. When there's anything bad to announce to the hands the Atwater Company uses yellow posters, like a small-pox, or typhoid warning. The horrid thing! The mills shut down in two weeks, Momsey, and no knowing when they will open again."
"Oh, my dear!" was the little woman's involuntary tribute to the seriousness of the announcement.
In a moment she was again her usual bright self. She drew Nan closer to her and her own brown eyes, the full counterpart of her daughter's, winkled merrily.
"I tell you what let's do, Nan," she said.
"What shall we do, Momsey?" repeated the girl, rather lugubriously.
"Why, let's not let Papa Sherwood know about it, it will make him feel so bad."
Nan began to giggle at that. She knew what her mother meant. Of course, Mr. Sherwood, being at the head of one of the mill departments, would know all about the announcement of the shut- down; but they would keep up the fiction that they did not know it by being particularly cheerful when he came home from work.
So Nan giggled and swallowed back her sobs. Surely, if Momsey could present a cheerful face to this family calamity, she could!
The girl ran her slim fingers into the thick mane of her mother's coiled hair, glossy brown hair through which only a few threads of white were speckled.
"Your head feels hot, Momsey," she said anxiously. "Does it ache?"
"A wee bit, honey," confessed Mrs. Sherwood.
"Let me take the pins out and rub your poor head, dear," said Nan. "You know, I'm a famous 'massagist.' Come do, dear."
"If you like, honey."
Thus it was that, a little later, when Mr. Sherwood came home with feet that dragged more than usual on this evening, he opened the door upon a very beautiful picture indeed.
His wife's hair was "a glory of womanhood," for it made a tent all about her, falling quite to the floor as she sat in her low chair. Out of this canopy she looked up at the brawny, serious man, roguishly.
"Am I not a lazy, luxurious person, Papa Sherwood?" she demanded. "Nan is becoming a practical maid, and I presume I put upon the child dreadfully, she is good-natured, like you, Robert."
"Aye, I know our Nan gets all her good qualities from me, Jessie," said her husband. "If she favored you she would, of course, be a very hateful child."
He kissed his wife tenderly. As Nan said, he always "cleaned up" at the mills and "came home kissable."
"I ought to be just next door to an angel,