She met with some slight opposition from Frances, loyally concealed
until they were alone, but this she easily ended by a great deal of talk
about the necessity of earning a living.
That’s what she called it; never facing the truth. If someone else had
confronted her with it, she very likely wouldn’t have recognised it.
Even in her own soul she called it a chance to “earn a living,” when it
was really nothing but a ferocious determination to seek another man
before accepting Mr. Petersen. She was resolved upon getting married.
Mr. Petersen she would take if no one else presented, but not without a
struggle, a gallant struggle to find a better. No one, nothing should
balk her of this literary man from New York.
It was another little triumph, too, to be the object of such deep
interest to her sister. They sat in the gloomy, cold bedroom, Frances on
the bed with a blanket round her shoulders, while Minnie, erect on a
broken little chair near the lamp, combed her heavy black hair with
conscientious vigour.
“How on earth did you ever find him?” Frances asked.
“I saw his advertisement in a New York paper; he wanted country board
some place where he could be quiet, for his writing. So I answered it.”
Frances expressed admiration for her enterprise.
“It was wonderful for you to think of such a thing,” she said, “But,
Minnie, what an awful lot of work and bother for you!”
“I don’t mind that,” Minnie answered scornfully, “I _like_ to work
hard.”
They sat up late, discussing the arrangement of the boarder’s room and
everything connected with him. They forgot nothing, overlooked nothing,
except the effect of all this upon their grandmother.
She lay awake in her room, vaguely bitter, very unhappy. She had died
and been buried that evening. She was supplanted. She was no longer to
be the guardian of Frankie and Minnie; in the future they were to take
care of her. As far as they were concerned, she was unnecessary; she
was--one might say--no longer anything but an urn of sacred ashes, to be
reverenced as the receptacle of what had once been an important human
being.
They heard her coughing feebly.
“No wonder she coughs!” said Minnie. “She will _not_ have the window
open the least crack.”
Frances spent all the next day, which was Sunday, in helping Minnie give
the boarder’s room a “good cleaning.” They cherished a tradition that
they detested such work, that it disgusted and exhausted them, but one
had only to hear their voices to know that the vigorous work delighted
them and that they were tremendously happy in doing it. Frankie was on
her knees scrubbing the floor, while Minnie cleaned the windows. They
talked incessantly; when it became necessary for Minnie to clean the
outsides of the panes, Frankie always had to stop work and stand beside
her, so that she could still hear.
As a sort of silent protest, their grandmother had dressed herself in
her best dress and was sitting in the parlour, reading a book of
sermons. The girls insisted that they were too busy to go to church.
“I’ll drive you, if you want,” Minnie told her, grudgingly, “but I can’t
spare the time to stay through the service.”
The old lady then said that all this work on the Sabbath was godless and
altogether wrong, and that she wouldn’t help in the least. Which Minnie
smartly parried by giving her to understand that there was nothing she
_could_ do--at her age. Relations were very much strained....
They sat down to supper, weary but profoundly satisfied.
“Well!” said Frances, “I _hope_ he’ll be all right. I hope he’ll be the
right sort.”
Minnie shook her head gravely.
“Not likely,” she said, “at eight dollars a week.”
“It isn’t money that gives people distinction,” Frances protested.
“Generally it is,” said Minnie.
Frances departed the next morning with a comfortable feeling that now
Minnie wouldn’t be so lonely. Perhaps she had a secret hope like the one
Minnie so cunningly dissembled....
A fortnight later she had an enthusiastic letter from Minnie, enclosing
a blurred and artistic photograph of herself and the old lady, sitting
in the sunset. The polite, the well-informed Mr. Blair had taken it.
Then for a long time she heard no more on the subject, and she was too
much engrossed in her own affairs to make enquiries about those of
anyone else.