Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/31

Rh everybody lie down flat, and fit into whatever chinks and crevices there happened to be, when once she made up her mind the course she meant to pursue—that is, if you got in her way, or didn't possess a good deal of steam power, yourself. There was nothing Augusta Morgan enjoyed more than smoothing out stretches of road out of repair in the lives of her family. But she smoothed them in only one way—the steam-roller way.

Her own father, David well knew, had died a broken and disappointed man, because this martinette of an oldest daughter of his, who, after her mother's death, ruled his house with iron masterfulness for years, denied him the privilege of remarrying; and Emma's husband had died groping for a hand he couldn't find, because Augusta Morgan, nursing him through his last sickness, decided when death was near not to summon Emma, his wife, asleep in the next room, who, she coolly concluded, needed her rest. Emma herself had become like pulp under her older sister's tyranny. So had Eunice. So had Reba.

Augusta Morgan was an able woman. There was no denying that. No job was too big for her. Competency radiated from her like kindness from some women. In her own way, she was as marvellous to David as Joseph Horween. They both had brought order out of confusion. They both had brought relief and peace of mind out of mental distress. David had only to recall that period of his life immediately preceding Augusta's advent, to realize how indispensable she was to him.

Augusta and Emma had just finished burying a cousin, who lived in Machias, Maine, when Reba's