"Oh, Susan does a lot, but I am the chief cook and Douglas is the brains of the concern and looks after all the money and does the buying. Nan attends to all the letter writing, and you would be astonished to see how much she has to do because we have showers of mail about board. Lucy sees to the setting of the tables, and all of us do everything that turns up to be done. Even Bobby helps."
"How ridiculous! Well, take care of your hands, darling. I hate to see a girl with roughened hands. There is simply no excuse for it."
Helen was dazed by her mother's attitude.
"She is just presenting a duck-back to trouble," thought the girl, looking rather ruefully at her shapely hands which were showing the inevitable signs of work.
She found Douglas sitting in a forlorn heap in their tent. Her countenance was the picture of woe.
"Well, it wouldn't be so bad to take a trip to the White, and you certainly deserve a change. Poor mumsy, too, is bored to death with such a long sea trip and she needs some society."
"Oh, I don't see that we need worry so about that. Mother says that there is not a tradesman in Richmond who would not be pleased to have us on his books for any amount. I, for one, am longing for some new clothes. I don't mind a bit working and cooking, but I do think I need some new things--and as for you--why, Douglas, you are a perfect rag bag."
Douglas looked at her sister in amazement. The lesson, then, was not learned yet! She had thought that Helen understood about the necessity of making no bills as the bills were what had helped to reduce their father to this state of invalidism, but here she was falling into the mother's way of thinking--willing to plunge into debt to any amount.
"But, Helen, you know you like Dr. Wright now and you must trust him."
"So I do. I like him better and trust him entirely and he himself told me at the station that father was getting well fast. He said it would take a little more time but that he would be perfectly well again--at least that is what I gathered. I know father would be the last man in the world to want his girls to go around looking like ash cats and you know it would make him ill indeed to think that mother wanted to go to White Sulphur for a while and could not go because of lack of money."