Charlotte's face was a study as she received these hints. They represented the things she disliked most and could do least well. Yet they were hardly farther afield than her own suggestion of sewing. Charlotte's inability with the needle was proverbial.
"What position do you consider yourself eminently fitted for, Mr. Lansing Birch?" she inquired, with uplifted chin.
"You have me there," her brother returned, good-humouredly. "There's only one thing I can think of--to go into the locomotive shops. Mechanics' wages are better than most, and a little practical experience wouldn't hurt me."
It was his turn to be met with derision. It could hardly be wondered at, for as he stood before them, John Lansing looked the personification of fastidiousness, and his face, although it surmounted a strongly proportioned and well developed body, suggested the mental characteristics not only of his father, but of certain great-grandfathers and uncles, who had won their distinction in intellectual arenas. Even his father seemed a little daunted at this proposal.
"That's it--laugh!" urged Lanse. "If I'd proposed to try to get on the 'reportorial staff' of a city newspaper you'd all smile approval, as at a thing suited to my genius. I'd have to live in town to do that, and what little I earned would go to fill my own hungry mouth. Now at the shops--you needn't look so top-lofty! Dozens of fellows who are taking engineering courses put on the overalls, shoulder a lunch-pail and go to work every morning during vacation at seven o'clock. They come grinning home at night, their faces black as tar, their spirits up in Q, jump into a bath-tub, put on clean togs, and come down to dinner looking like gentlemen--but not gentlemen any more thoroughly than they have been all day."
Jeff looked at his brother seriously. "Lanse," he said, "if you go into one of the locomotive shops won't you get a place for me?"
But Celia interposed. "Whatever the rest of us do," she said, "Jeff and Just must keep on with school."
Jeff rebelled with a grimace. "Not much!" he shouted. "I guess one six-footer is as good as another in a boiler-shop. You don't catch me swallowing algebra and German when I might be developing muscle. If Lanse puts on overalls I'm after him."
Celia looked at her father. "What do you think of all this, sir?" she asked. "If I stay at home, dismiss Delia, and do the housework myself, and Lanse finds some suitable position, can't we get on? Charlotte can put off the school of design another year. We will all be very economical about clothes----"
"Being economical doesn't bring in cash to pay bills," interrupted Jeff. "Do the best he can, Lanse won't draw any hair-raising salary the first year. He could probably get clerical work at one of the banks, but what's that? He'd fall off so in his wind I could throw him across the room in three months."
They all laughed. Jeff's devotion to athletics dominated his ideals at all times, and his disgust at the thought of such a depletion of his brother's physical forces was amusing.
Celia was still looking at her father. He spoke in the hearty tone to which they were accustomed, his face full of satisfaction.
"You please me very much, all of you," he said. "It will be the best tonic I can offer your mother. Her greatest trial is this very necessity, which she foresaw the instant the plan was formed--so much sacrifice on the part of her children. Yet she agreed with me that the experience might not be wholly bad for you, and she said"--he paused, smiling at his elder daughter--"that with Celia at the helm she was sure the family ship wouldn't be wrecked"
Then he told them that they might plan the division of labour and responsibility as they thought practicable. He agreed with Celia that the younger boys must remain in school, but added--since at this point it became necessary to mollify his son Jefferson--that a fellow with a will might find any number of remunerative odd jobs out of school and study hours. He commended Lansing's idea, but advised him to look around before deciding; and he passed an affectionate hand over Charlotte's black curls as he observed that young person sunk in gloom.
"Cheer up, little girl!" he said. "The second violin is immensely important to the music of the family orchestra. The hand that can design wall-papers can learn to relieve the mistress of the house of some of her cares. Celia, without a maid in the kitchen, will find plenty of use for such a quick brain as lies under this thatch."
But at this moment something happened--something to which the family were not unused. Charlotte suddenly wriggled out from under the caressing hand, and in half a dozen quick movements was out of the room. They had all had a vision of brilliant wet eyes, flushing cheeks, and red, rebellious mouth.
"Poor child!" murmured Celia. "She thinks we find her of no use."
"She is rather a scatterbrain," Lanse observed. "The year may do her good, as you say, father--as well as the rest of us," he added, with modesty.
"There's a lot of things she can do, just the same,"--Jeff fired up, instantly--"things the rest of us are perfect noodles at. When she gets to earning more money in a day than the rest of us can in a month maybe we'll let up on that second-fiddle business."
"Good for you, you faithful Achates!" said Lanse. Then he turned to his father. "You haven't told us yet when you go, sir."
"If we can, two weeks from to-day," said Mr. Birch. Then he went up-stairs to tell his wife that she might go peacefully to sleep, for her children were ready to become her devoted slaves. Justin followed Jeff out of the room, and Jeff broke away from this younger brother and hastened to rap a familiar, comforting signal of comradeship on Charlotte's locked door.
Left alone, Lanse and Celia looked at each other.
"Well, old girl--" began Lansing, gently.
"O Lanse!" breathed Celia.
He patted her shoulder. "Bear up, dear. It's tough to give up college for a year--"
"Oh, that's not it!" cried the girl, and buried her face in a sofa pillow.
"No, that's not it," he answered, under his breath. He shook his shoulders and walked away to the fire, stood staring down into it for a minute with sober eyes, then drew a long breath and came back to his sister.
"It's a relief that there's something we can do to help her get well," he said, slowly. "And she will get well, Celia--she will--she must!"
CHAPTER II
"Where's the shawl-strap?"
"Charlotte, wait just a moment; are you perfectly sure that mother's dressing sack and knit slippers are in the case? Nobody saw them put in, and I don't--"
"Justin, run down-stairs, please, and get that unopened package of water-biscuit. You'll find it on the pantry shelf, I think."
"Lanse, if the furnace runs all night with the draught on, your fire will be burned out in the morning, and it will take an extra amount of coal to get it started again."
"Where's Jeff? He must be told about--"
"Put mother's overshoes to warm."
"I have left two hundred dollars to your credit at the bank, Lansing, and I--"
"Lanse, did you telephone for--"
"Where did Celia put the--"
"Listen, all of you. I--"
"What did Jeff do with that small white--"
"Silence!" shouted Lansing, above the din. "Can't you people get these traps together without all yelling at once? You will have mother so used up she can't start."
Mrs. Birch smiled at her tall son from the easy chair where she had been placed ten minutes before, her family protesting that they could finish the numberless small tasks yet to be done. It was nine o'clock in