What Diantha Did | Page 7

might as well face the worst--how many years do you think that will be, dearest?"
He was a little annoyed at her persistence. Also, though he would not admit the thought, it did not seem quite the thing for her to ask. A woman should not seek too definite a period of waiting. She ought to trust--to just wait on general principles.
"I can face a thing better if I know just what I'm facing," said the girl, quietly, "and I'd wait for you, if I had to, all my life. Will it be twenty years, do you think?"
He looked relieved. "Why, no, indeed, darling. It oughtn't to be at the outside more than five. Or six," he added, honest though reluctant.
"You see, father had no time to settle anything; there were outstanding accounts, and the funeral expenses, and the mortgages. But the business is good; and I can carry it; I can build it up." He shook his broad shoulders determinedly. "I should think it might be within five, perhaps even less. Good things happen sometimes--such as you, my heart's delight."
They were at her gate now, and she stood a little while to say good-night. A step inside there was a seat, walled in by evergreen, roofed over by the wide acacia boughs. Many a long good-night had they exchanged there, under the large, brilliant California moon. They sat there, silent, now.
Diantha's heart was full of love for him, and pride and confidence in him; but it was full of other feelings, too, which he could not fathom. His trouble was clearer to her than to him; as heavy to bear. To her mind, trained in all the minutiae of domestic economy, the Warden family lived in careless wastefulness. That five women--for Dora was older than she had been when she began to do housework--should require servants, seemed to this New England-born girl mere laziness and pride. That two voting women over twenty should prefer being supported by their brother to supporting themselves, she condemned even more sharply. Moreover, she felt well assured that with a different family to "support," Mr. Warden would never have broken down so suddenly and irrecoverably. Even that funeral--her face hardened as she thought of the conspicuous "lot," the continual flowers, the monument (not wholly paid for yet, that monument, though this she did not know)--all that expenditure to do honor to the man they had worked to death (thus brutally Diantha put it) was probably enough to put off their happiness for a whole year.
She rose at last, her hand still held in his. "I'm sorry, but I've got to get supper, dear," she said, "and you must go. Good-night for the present; you'll be round by and by?"
"Yes, for a little while, after we close up," said he, and took himself off, not too suddenly, walking straight and proud while her eves were on him, throwing her a kiss from the corner; but his step lagging and his headache settling down upon him again as he neared the large house with the cupola.
Diantha watched him out of sight, turned and marched up the path to her own door, her lips set tight, her well-shaped head as straightly held as his. "It's a shame, a cruel, burning shame!" she told herself rebelliously. "A man of his ability. Why, he could do anything, in his own work! And he loved it so!
"To keep a grocery store--
""And nothing to show for all that splendid effort!
"They don't do a thing? They just _live_--and 'keep house!' All those women!
"Six years? Likely to be sixty! But I'm not going to wait!"

WHAT DIANTHA DID

CHAPTER II.
AN UNNATURAL DAUGHTER
The brooding bird fulfills her task, Or she-bear lean and brown; All parent beasts see duty true, All parent beasts their duty do, We are the only kind that asks For duty upside down.
The stiff-rayed windmill stood like a tall mechanical flower, turning slowly in the light afternoon wind; its faint regular metallic squeak pricked the dry silence wearingly. Rampant fuchsias, red-jewelled, heavy, ran up its framework, with crowding heliotrope and nasturtiums. Thick straggling roses hung over the kitchen windows, and a row of dusty eucalyptus trees rustled their stiff leaves, and gave an ineffectual shade to the house.
It was one of those small frame houses common to the northeastern states, which must be dear to the hearts of their dwellers. For no other reason, surely, would the cold grey steep-roofed little boxes be repeated so faithfully in the broad glow of a semi-tropical landscape. There was an attempt at a "lawn," the pet ambition of the transplanted easterner; and a further attempt at "flower-beds," which merely served as a sort of springboard to their far-reaching products.
The parlor, behind the closed blinds, was as New England parlors are; minus the hint of cosiness given by