“It does seem to me, kids,” said Kit in exasperation, “that when someone
is trying to write, you might be a little quiet.”
The three at the end of the room paid no attention. Tommy was so
absorbed in trying to see over Doris’ shoulder that he didn’t realize he
was losing his balance. Perched on the back of the chair, he suddenly
toppled over and landed squarely in Doris’ lap. With all the dignity of
the eleven-year-old that he was, he picked himself up and resumed his
perch.
“Cut it out, will you?” protested Doris. “You practically killed me.”
“Aw, I wasn’t doing anything.”
Jean was making plans for a party. The list of names lay before her, and
she tapped her pencil on her nose thoughtfully as she eyed it.
“Now, listen, Jean,” Doris proposed. “I’ve got an idea. Why not roll up
the living room rug and push the furniture back out of the way, so that
we can play records and dance. We can ask all the kids who have records
to bring a few with them. That way we won’t have to keep playing our
same old records over and over. Don’t you think that would be fun?”
“OK. If we have plenty of cokes, potato chips, and pretzels on hand, we
won’t need much else for refreshments, do you think? Or should we have
hamburgers later, too?”
“We can get along without hamburgers, although those boys will eat all
they can get their hands on,” replied Doris.
“How many do you have on your list?” asked Kit.
“Ten. With the four of us, that should be plenty for a party. I still
wonder if it’s really wise to have one with Mother bringing Dad home.”
The rest were silent. Kit, sitting at her mother’s desk beside the wide
bay window, looked up and frowned at the falling snow that was obscuring
the view of the Sound. A pearly grayness seemed to be settling around
the big house as if it were being cut off from the rest of the world by
a thick, soft curtain.
“Hope Dad’s feeling better by now,” Kit said suddenly, pushing her dark
bangs back from her forehead restlessly. “They said they would be
leaving the hospital the eighth. Wasn’t it the eighth, Jean?”
“Oh, they’ll be home in plenty of time,” Jean exclaimed. “Here we all
sit, looking like small, black storm clouds when he’s better. Mother
said positively in her last letter that he had improved wonderfully
during the week.”
Doris stared at the long, low couch on one side of the open fireplace.
It was over four weeks since her father had lain on it. Early the
previous fall he had come home after two and a half years in the Army.
During those years Mrs. Craig had managed to hold her family together
although it hadn’t been easy with four children. When they had received
word that Major Thomas Craig had been wounded in the Pacific, they had
all been worried. Later, he was well enough to return to the States, and
it was comforting to have him nearer home. Finally, the Army Hospital in
Philadelphia had discharged him and he returned to his family at last.
Through the winter there had been a steady decline in his health until
it was necessary for him to return to the Army Hospital for possible
further treatment.
Somehow Doris could not help wondering whether the future would get any
brighter. She rose quickly, shaking her head defiantly at the thought,
as any thirteen-year-old girl would.
“Let’s not worry, kids. If we’re all blue when he comes, he’ll have a
relapse.”
Then Jean spoke, anxiously, tenderly, her big dark eyes questioning Kit.
“What about Mother?”
“We’re all worried about Mother, Jeannie. You’re not the only one,” Kit
snapped. “But you can be aching with love inside, and still not go
moping around with a long face like that!”
“Like what?” demanded Jean haughtily.
“Quit it, kids, don’t fight,” Tommy said, just as if he were the eldest
instead of the youngest. “Gosh, you two argue much more than Doris and I
do.”
“Well, I think,” said Doris firmly, “that we ought to remember Mom just
as Jean says. She’s almost sick herself worrying over Dad, and there she
is, away down in Philadelphia with nobody to share her troubles.”
Jean smiled rather forlornly. She had assumed most of the responsibility
since they had been left alone. Rebecca, their cousin, had arrived only
a few days before Mrs. Craig had left, and it had not been easy to
assume a mother’s place suddenly and run the home.
“Everything seems to be coming at once,” she said. “The party and Kit’s
minor masterpiece for Lincoln’s Birthday.”
“Class symposium on ‘Lincoln: The Man—The President—The Liberator’—” Kit
ran it off proudly. “Little classics of three hundred words each. You
should see Billie Warren’s, Jean. He’s been boiling it down for a week
from two thousand words, and every day Barbie King asks him how he’s
getting along. And you know how Billie talks. This morning he just
glowered and told her, ‘It’s still just sap!’ What a character.”
“Kit, don’t,” laughed Jean in spite of herself. “If you get ink spots on
Mother’s desk, you’ll have a nice mess on your hands.”
Kit moved the inkwell farther back as a small concession, and suggested
once more that the rest of the family try to keep conversation down to a
roar about their old party while she finished her symposium.
“You know,” Doris began with a far-off look in her eyes, “I think we’re
awfully selfish, and I mean all of us, not just Kit—”
“That’s nice. I love company,” murmured Kit.
“Here’s Dad coming back home after five weeks’ absence, and we don’t
know really whether he’s better or worse—”
“Doris, don’t even let yourself think that he’s anything but better,”
pleaded Jean.
“But it’s perfectly true. He needs rest above everything else, so the
doctor told Mother. And here we are planning a party for the day he gets
home.”
“Dad always insists that we go ahead and not upset our plans. He says he
feels better knowing we’re happy,” replied Jean.
Kit stared out of the window again, thinking. At fifteen she was far
more energetic than Jean at seventeen. Her agile mind easily found its
way in and out of difficulty. With her curly hair cut short, she seemed
more like another boy in the family. She, more than the others, even
Tommy, resembled their father in many ways, lighthearted, gay, carefree.
Secretly, Kit felt far more able to take the lead than did Jean, now
that the family was facing a crisis.
“Anyway, I’ve called all the kids and Mother knows we’re going to have
the party because I wrote her all about it. She wrote back that she
didn’t mind a bit if Becky didn’t.”
“But did you ask Becky, Jean?”
“You ask her. She’d say yes to anything you asked, Doris.”
Doris thawed at once.
It seemed as if their elderly cousin had come down from her calm and
well-ordered seclusion at Elmhurst, Connecticut, just when they needed
her most. Usually she contented herself with sending the family useful
and proper gifts on birthdays and at Christmas, but they seldom saw her.
She was forty-seven, plump, serene, and still good-looking, with her
blonde hair just beginning to look a trifle silvery, and a fine network
of wrinkles showing around the corners of her eyes and mouth.
“Land alive, Margaret Ann,” she had told Mrs. Craig happily the moment
she set foot inside the wide entrance hall at Sandy Cove, “didn’t I know
you needed me?” And she laughed. “I didn’t plan to descend on you so
sudden, but it looked as if you needed someone, Tom down sick and you
worn out taking care of him. Don’t you worry at all about my being put
out. I’ll stay here with the children and take care of things till you
get back home.”
And Mrs. Craig had agreed thankfully. After a three months’ siege with
her husband through his nervous breakdown, she was glad indeed to
welcome the strong assistance of Rebecca.
“Let’s put it up to her right now,” Kit exclaimed. “I’d just as soon ask
her if Doris is afraid.”
Before the others could hold her back, she had slipped out of the living
room and was racing up the stairs, two at a time, into the large sunny
room at the south end of the house where one could look out over Long
Island Sound. But at the door Kit stopped short. Over at the window
stood Becky, energetically wiping her eyes with a generous-sized plain
linen handkerchief, and the end of her nose was red from weeping.
“Come in, my dear, come right in,” she said hastily, as Kit backed away.
“I’m glad you happened up. Come here to your old second cousin and
comfort her. I feel as if all the waves in the Sound had washed over
me.”
Kit hurried over, put her hand on Becky’s arm, and squeezed it
reassuringly. “What’s the matter? Anything about Dad?” demanded Kit,
swift to catch the connection between her cousin’s tears and words. “Did
you get a letter?”
“No,” answered Rebecca, “your mother just telephoned me from
Philadelphia. Your father is worse and the doctors think he would be
better off at home. They will be home in three days. You know, Kit,
they’d never do that if the doctors could do anything more.” There was a
break in Rebecca’s voice. “I just wish I had him up home safe in the
room he used to have when he was a boy. He had measles the same time I
did when my mother was alive. That’s your Aunt Charlotte, Kit, she that
was Charlotte Peabody from Boston. But I always seemed to take after the
Craig side instead of the Peabody, they said, and Tom was just like my
own brother. I wish I had him away from doctors and trained nurses and
Army hospitals, and had old Doctor Gallup tending him instead. I’ve seen
him march right up to Charon’s ferryboat and haul out somebody he didn’t
think was through living.”
Kit stood with her hands clasped behind her head, looking down at the
pines, their branches lightly crystalled with snow and ice. Somehow it
didn’t seem as if God could let her father slip out of the world after
He had allowed him to come home from the war. And just when they all
needed him so much. During all the months of illness, the girls and
Tommy had not grasped the seriousness of it. He only seemed weak and not
himself. They knew he had not gone back to work in his office in New
York after he left the Army, but they had taken these things lightly.
Perhaps only Jean had really gleaned the meaning of her mother’s anxious
face, the steady daily visits of the nerve specialist, and, last of all,
the decision to return to the Army Hospital in Philadelphia.
Kit closed her eyes and wrinkled her face as if with a twinge of sharp
pain. “It’s going to be awful,” she said softly, “just awful for Mom.”
Rebecca squared her ample shoulders unconsciously, and lifted her double
chin in challenge to the worry that the next few days might hold.
“It’s worse for you children and Tom. We women are given special
strength to bear just such trials. We’ve got to be strong,” she said.
But the tears came slowly, miserably to Kit’s brown eyes. She pulled the
curtains back, and looked out as the blue waters of the Sound were
turning purple and violet in the gathering gloom of the late afternoon.
The land looked desolate, and yet it was but a light snowfall. Down
close to the water some gulls rose and swept in a big half circle toward
the other side of the inlet. Bob Phelps, running along the sidewalk
toward home, waved a big bunch of pussy willows at her.
“Spring’s coming, Kit,” he yelled. “Just found some and they’re ’most
out!”
Kit waved back mechanically. Of course she must not break down and cry.
Even Tommy wouldn’t, and she and Jean must be strong and brace up the
two younger ones so they all could help their mother. Still the tears
came. What was the use of spring if—
“Kit, aren’t you ever coming down?” called Jean from the foot of the
stairs.
“Right now,” Kit answered. “You come too, please, Becky. We need you
awfully. To tell us what to do next.”
“No, you don’t,” said Rebecca calmly. “You don’t need me anymore than
the earth needs me to tell it this snow’s going away and the flowers
will soon be blossoming. The first thing you must do is learn how to
meet your father with a smile.”