Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/444

 and factories are bringing in more and more people. I want Pa to rest or sell the house and live with the cousins. They need money, and he would be taken care of. He won't talk about it. In fact, now that I'm leaving he doesn't talk to me at all."

"Men have to have their own way," Mae commented, yawning from the soothing motion of her rocker.

"I can't wait to see Lucy. She hasn't written me in weeks. She never writes much of anything anyway. Her cards are mostly questions about what you and I are doing."

"My letters are like that too. But I'm glad she says she is having a good time. She thinks she will be going into a show soon. She said in yesterday's letter that she has an agent now to do all that work. She liked the hotel she is staying at too. It isn't as much • trouble as keeping house since she fired Cleo. The Jason Hotel. I don't remember it, do you?"

"No. But I never paid much attention to hotels."

"Lucy always liked hotels best. When your mother died so suddenly and you came out I thought first maybe you would take care of Mabel and I would go East. Then I realized your father needed you and so I thought I'd get a nurse. But Lucy said not to come, that she might be going on the road any time. I think maybe she's enjoying herself not having to have me around. I like it when she goes out and has a good time. I don't like her to think she must stay home because of me. So—I've stayed on because Mabel won't be better for a long time. But I feel better about being away now that you're going back." She cocked her head. "I hear Mabel awake. I must go and help her because she isn't used to crutches yet." She put her arms around Vida. "I'll miss you, but I'm glad you're going to see Lucy. You will write and tell me everything? If she needs me?"

"I'll write as soon as I see her. Now I must go and say goodbye to Mrs. Brush."

It was a kind of deliverance to be in the rattling coach, isolated among strangers, where one could at last gather oneself together for the first time in months. The train sped past tattered com skeletons leaning anguished against the wind. Odd that though Clem talked about how optimistic every aspect of life in Congress was his paintings invariably recorded only the dry melancholy of this passing landscape. Even the new oil of hepaticas, elaborately framed, which 432