What Diantha Did | Page 5

going away for vacations, no anything."
"Now, Cora, don't be discontented! You must not add a straw to dear
Roscoe's burdens," said her mother.
"Of course not, mother; I wouldn't for the world. I never saw her but

that once; and she wasn't very cordial. But, as you say, she might do
_something._ She might invite us to visit her."
"If she ever comes back again, I'm going to recite for her," said, Dora,
firmly.
Her mother gazed fondly on her youngest. "I wish you could, dear," she
agreed. "I'm sure you have talent; and Madam Weatherstone would
recognize it. And Adeline's music too. And Cora's art. I am very proud
of my girls."
Cora sat where the light fell well upon her work. She was illuminating
a volume of poems, painting flowers on the margins, in appropriate
places--for Roscoe.
"I wonder if he'll care for it?" she said, laying down her brush and
holding the book at arm's length to get the effect.
"Of course he will!" answered her mother, warmly. "It is not only the
beauty of it, but the affection! How are you getting on, Dora?"
Dora was laboring at a task almost beyond her fourteen years,
consisting of a negligee shirt of outing flannel, upon the breast of
which she was embroidering a large, intricate design--for Roscoe. She
was an ambitious child, but apt to tire in the execution of her large
projects.
"I guess it'll be done," she said, a little wearily. "What are you going to
give him, mother?"
"Another bath-robe; his old one is so worn. And nothing is too good for
my boy."
"He's coming," said Adeline, who was still looking down the road; and
they all concealed their birthday work in haste.
A tall, straight young fellow, with an air of suddenly-faced maturity
upon him, opened the gate under the pepper trees and came toward

them.
He had the finely molded features we see in portraits of handsome
ancestors, seeming to call for curling hair a little longish, and a rich
profusion of ruffled shirt. But his hair was sternly short, his shirt
severely plain, his proudly carried head spoke of effort rather than of
ease in its attitude.
Dora skipped to meet him, Cora descended a decorous step or two.
Madeline and Adeline, arm in arm, met him at the piazza edge, his
mother lifted her face.
"Well, mother, dear!" Affectionately he stooped and kissed her, and she
held his hand and stroked it lovingly. The sisters gathered about with
teasing affection, Dora poking in his coat-pocket for the stick candy her
father always used to bring her, and her brother still remembered.
"Aren't you home early, dear?" asked Mrs. Warden.
"Yes; I had a little headache"--he passed his hand over his
forehead--"and Joe can run the store till after supper, anyhow." They
flew to get him camphor, cologne, a menthol-pencil. Dora dragged
forth the wicker lounge. He was laid out carefully and fanned and
fussed over till his mother drove them all away.
"Now, just rest," she said. "It's an hour to supper time yet!" And she
covered him with her latest completed afghan, gathering up and
carrying away the incomplete one and its tumultuous constituents.
He was glad of the quiet, the fresh, sweet air, the smell of flowers
instead of the smell of molasses and cheese, soap and sulphur matches.
But the headache did not stop, nor the worry that caused it. He loved
his mother, he loved his sisters, he loved their home, but he did not
love the grocery business which had fallen so unexpectedly upon him
at his father's death, nor the load of debt which fell with it.
That they need never have had so large a "place" to "keep up" did not
occur to him. He had lived there most of his life, and it was home. That

the expenses of running the household were three times what they
needed to be, he did not know. His father had not questioned their style
of living, nor did he. That a family of five women might, between them,
do the work of the house, he did not even consider.
Mrs. Warden's health was never good, and since her husband's death
she had made daily use of many afghans on the many lounges of the
house. Madeline was "delicate," and Adeline was "frail"; Cora was
"nervous," Dora was "only a child." So black Sukey and her husband
Jonah did the work of the place, so far as it was done; and Mrs. Warden
held it a miracle of management that she could "do with one servant,"
and the height of womanly devotion on her daughters' part that they
dusted the parlor and arranged the flowers.
Roscoe shut his eyes and tried to rest, but his problem beset