THE Formans were at breakfast, at least two of them were. The others were absorbed with the morning mail. The table was neatly1 spread, the aroma2 of coffee was in the air, and the plate of home-made cookies invited attention, but Jean, the youngest daughter, and Derrick, the son, were the only ones who paid the slightest attention to breakfast.
Jean was eating grapes, and Derrick, as he reached for the fourth cookie, said: "I wonder if I am expected to eat all these."
Jean giggled3. "You are getting well under way, I think; keep right on; I'm attending to the grapes myself. Only look at them!-I mean the folks, Dickie dear, not the grapes—even mother is lost in a letter. I wonder who it can be from? It's an awfully4 long one." Then she raised her voice: "I think one of you might read aloud for the benefit of Dick and me—and the cookies; mother, there won't be a single cookie left if you don't attend to Dick."
Thus roused Mrs. Forman laid down her letter with a little sigh, and grasped the handle of the coffee pot as she said: "What is it you want, Derrick, a cup of coffee?"
"No, mother; no coffee for me. I'll just take a cookie or two and be off." Saying which he reached for his fifth and, to the sound of Jean's laughing protest, hastily left the room.
Mrs. Forman did not smile; she was still preoccupied5; but she tried to rally her thoughts. "Joseph your coffee is getting cold. Girls, will you have coffee? Have you letters from any of the relatives?"
"Mine isn't," said Florence, the second daughter. "It is from Nannie Douglass; they are at Delmont, and expect to stay through the month. Oh mother, I wish I could have Nannie spend a week with me while they are so near."
There was a pathetic note in her voice suggesting the hopelessness of the wish, but the mother, usually quick to sympathize, did not respond to it even by a glance. Ray, the observant oldest daughter, noticed the tightening6 of muscles about her father's mouth, and knew that, although he was supposed to be absorbed in his paper, he had heard. She telegraphed a note of warning to her sister, who, however, did not need it. The girl had returned to her neglected muffin, her face grave and sad; but evidently she had thought, and meant to say no more.
"My letter," said Ray, "was from the girls, all of them; they are at Ocean Beach for a week together; only four of the class missing; isn't that doing well for so large a class?"
"Eleven girls!" Jean exclaimed. "What a babel they must make! I hope they are not all at the same boarding house! Where are the others?"
"The others? of the class? Why, Edith and Emily Prentiss are still in the East; Edith is studying music in Boston."
"And the other two?" persisted the heedless Jean. Her sister turned grave eyes upon her.
"Don't you remember, Jean, that Celia Roberts died only a few weeks after commencement?"
"Oh, I remember; and you are the fourth? Poor Ray! you ought to be there this minute."
Mr. Forman rose up suddenly, his coffee still waiting. "I must go," he said. Mrs. Forman protested anxiously; wouldn't he let her give him a cup of hot coffee? No, he wouldn't; he murmured something about it being later than he had realized, and hurried away.
Mrs. Forman waited until the door closed after him, then spoke7 in a discouraged tone: "I wish, Jean, you could learn to be a little more considerate of your father's feelings; it is hard enough for him to be compelled to deny you all sorts of pleasures, without having it stabbed into him."
"It was horrid8 of me, mommie," said the penitent9 Jean. "I wish I hadn't such an awful forgettery; but father knows that I didn't mean a thing."
"He and the cookies skipped, I guess, while you were reading that long letter," Florence explained. "Who is it from, mother?"
Mrs. Forman looked down at the closely written pages and sighed, as she answered: "It is from Aunt Caroline, and it is all about your Aunt Elsie; she wants us to let her come here."
"Aunt Elsie!" Florence exclaimed.
"Oh, mother!" from Jean.
Then Ray: "Why, mother, what is the matter?"
"It is a long story, girls, going back before you were born; but the part that concerns us now is simple enough. The woman who has lived with Aunt Elsie for years, and cared for her like a daughter, has recently died, and there must be an entire change of arrangements."
"Well," Florence said, after an ominous11 silence, "why should that make it—what about Aunt Caroline? Why doesn't she look after her own sister?"
"Company," she says. "Two of her husband's relatives to stay through the fall, one for all winter, perhaps. Besides, she has no suitable downstairs room; and there are half a dozen other reasons; the main one, I imagine, being that she doesn't want her."
"Neither do we," murmured Jean, but no one noticed her, and Mrs. Forman continued.
"Those sisters have not been together, except for a few hours at long intervals12, since they were young girls, and they seem to have nothing in common."
Then Florence interposed: "Why doesn't she go to Uncle Evarts? He has a large house and servants to wait on her."
"That, your Aunt Caroline says, is quite out of the question. It seems that the married daughter has come home to spend the winter, and has three little children. Your uncle says it would be very bad for his sister to be shut into a furnace-heated house all winter in the centre of a great city, 'with three lively children who would fit her for the lunatic asylum13 before the winter was half over.'"
Mrs. Forman had taken up her letter again and was quoting from it. A silence that suggested consternation14 fell upon them, broken presently by Jean.
"Mother, will we have to do it?"
"Do what, Jean?"
"Why—have her come here?"
Mrs. Forman's expressive15 eyes rested full upon her youngest daughter, with a shade of rebuke16 in them.
"Isn't that a strange way to speak of having a visit from your aunt?"
"Well, but—" Jean hesitated, her face flushing under the rebuke, then she hurried on: "Mother, it isn't just an ordinary visit; you said for all winter, didn't you? That is what it means, anyway; and she is only a half aunt; it isn't as though she were father's own sister; he doesn't even know her very well; it seems as though he had enough—"
She left her sentence unfinished, but the mother answered what she had meant to say.
"He certainly has, Jean; for that reason we must not do anything to make it harder; he has always looked upon your Aunt Elsie as his sister, and although he left home when he was a mere17 boy he remembers her perfectly18 as a little child of whom he was fond; it would break his heart to be compelled, with all the rest, to deny her any kindnesses she may need."
"But that's just it; she can't help being an added burden, and there are her own sister and brother, both of them with plenty of money; they could do a great deal more for her than we possibly can. Do you really think he would want her to come if he realized that?"
Mrs. Forman made a gesture almost like despair, and Ray came to the rescue.
"Of course, Jean, he will want to receive his sister if she wants to come. We can manage to make her comfortable, can't we, mother?"
"Well, I must say I don't see how," Florence said, without waiting for her mother. "You say Aunt Caroline has no downstairs room, and I'm sure we haven't; why isn't that an excellent reason for her not coming? For that matter we haven't an upstairs room, either, that would be nice for her, unless—how could we possibly manage it? Mother, why don't you speak?"
"You and Jean do not give her any chance," Ray said, trying to laugh.
Mrs. Forman spoke with evident effort: "There is only one way, Florence; your father and I would have to take an upstairs room."
"Father move!" Jean's tone was expressive, and her mother answered it.
"I know—but there is no other way; Aunt Elsie is lame19, and stairs for her are out of the question; but I am sure your father would rather move out of the house altogether than be forced to turn down this appeal for his help. We can manage to be comfortable upstairs, I think, in any room that our children are-willing to give up to us."
She attempted a smile. Ray spoke quickly: "Of course, mother, if it comes to that you and father must have our room; Jean can go with Florence."
Groans20 followed from both of the younger girls, but Jean recovered speech quickly and wanted to know what Ray proposed to do with herself; did she mean to dress on the back porch, as well as sleep there? Then, dolefully: "Oh, Ray, your lovely big room, with all your college things in it! how can you?"
"Never mind, Jeanie," the girl said, brightly. "Don't you know how often we have said that mother and father ought to have that room? I could manage nicely with the little one back of it, but I was thinking—will it do, mother, to leave Aunt Elsie alone on the first floor?"
Mrs. Forman admitted that it might not be right for a lame person to sleep so far from others, yet she did not know how else to plan; that was certainly the only downstairs sleeping room, and there was no other that could be converted into one. Then Ray wondered if a couch could not be set up in the little trunk room if the trunks were moved to the attic22; she believed the room was long enough on the south side for a cot, and, if so, she could sleep there and be within call.
Jean exclaimed: "Why, Ray Forman! that is nothing but a closet. The idea!"
"It has a wide window, Jean dear; I could sleep with my head out of doors if I chose; and think what a nice roomy place I should have upstairs, with the bed out of the way; I can do it nicely, mother, if you want to plan it so."
Mrs. Forman sighed again, and said that Ray was doing, once more, what she had done ever since she was able to think and plan—sacrificing herself for others; she, the mother, ought to be used to it, but it did seem a pity that it must always be the same one on whom the burden fell heaviest. She arose from the table as she spoke, the others following her lead. Jean, as she clattered23 the cups and saucers, gathering24 them for the little maid in the kitchen, continued to express her mind, with no listener save herself. "All I have to say is that I think there are a lot of awfully selfish people in this world, and they don't all live in this house, either. I just detest25 rooming with Florence, but, of course, I'll do it, and mother knows I will; she needn't think that Ray does all the sacrificing. If I were Aunt Caroline, or Uncle Evarts—which, thank goodness, I'm not—I should be ashamed to look any of us in the face after this."
Nothing had occurred for months to upheave the Forman household as did this letter from Mr. Forman's youngest sister. The family had grown accustomed, at least in a degree, to straitened means and careful economies. Mr. Forman's failure in business had occurred when Jean, the youngest, was a mere child; yet she distinctly remembered the great house on Duval Circle, and especially the fine car in which she daily rode, attended by a maid. The others, of course, had vivid recollections of the refinements26 and luxuries, as well as of many things that they used to name necessities, that had to be given up when the crash came; but time had softened27 much of the bitterness connected with the change; they were even growing used to the small, plain house on Fourth Street and one untrained little maid, although they still never went in the vicinity of Duval Circle if it could be avoided; and Florence had not yet trained herself away from occasional outbursts over the changed conditions. These, however, were very rare in her father's presence. She still remembered with remorse28 the day when, after an especially harrowing experience, she had burst forth29 with: "Oh, if father could only have been persuaded not to trust that horrid man who is responsible for all this" and then had heard a heavy book drop to the floor with a thud, and a deep groan21 from the father whom she had supposed was not in the house. A moment afterwards the door of the little reading room, which now served as his library, was quietly closed, and save for the look of unutterable reproach on her mother's face as she closed it, no reference was ever made to the incident. But that groan had burned into her heart. Jean, under like circumstances, would have rushed into her father's arms and fairly smothered30 him with kisses while she poured forth a volume of regrets and frantic31 promises never to do so again; she would also be liable to forget it all, before the day was done, and fail in exactly the same way. Florence was different. However, they all, in their differing ways, had for a central object in life the saving of their father's feelings.
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1
neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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aroma
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| n.香气，芬芳，芳香 | |
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3
giggled
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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4
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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5
preoccupied
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| adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
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6
tightening
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| 上紧，固定，紧密 | |
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7
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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8
horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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9
penitent
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| adj.后悔的；n.后悔者；忏悔者 | |
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10
awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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11
ominous
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| adj.不祥的，不吉的，预兆的，预示的 | |
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12
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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13
asylum
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| n.避难所，庇护所，避难 | |
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14
consternation
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| n.大为吃惊，惊骇 | |
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15
expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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16
rebuke
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| v.指责，非难，斥责 [反]praise | |
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17
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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18
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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lame
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| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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groans
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| n.呻吟，叹息( groan的名词复数 )；呻吟般的声音v.呻吟( groan的第三人称单数 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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21
groan
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| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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22
attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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23
clattered
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| 发出咔哒声（clatter的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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24
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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25
detest
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| vt.痛恨，憎恶 | |
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26
refinements
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| n.（生活）风雅；精炼( refinement的名词复数 )；改良品；细微的改良；优雅或高贵的动作 | |
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27
softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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28
remorse
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| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
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29
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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30
smothered
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| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的过去式和过去分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
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frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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