Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/44

34 ask her! In spite of the tall gaunt spectre that stood beside her, in spite of her own hair done the wrong way—crimped (she did it up on hair-pins at night) and pompadoured, Japanese fashion—and her white kid shoes with heels, when they should have been buckskin and flat, in spite of such handicaps, a young god had once bowed before her, and lifted his hat, and asked her to be one of his sailing-party. Reba smiled now at the dim recollection.

What a pitifully meager little memory for a woman of twenty-five to be treasuring! How pitifully meager everything had always been in her life. What a failure she was anyhow! She, who might have made the lives of those women downstairs green again with her youth, had not done so. They had thought that there would be party-frocks to make for her (they loved to sew), sheets to tear, napkins to hem, a wedding-dress perhaps, and—daring supposition—baby-clothes possibly sometime. It was because of their disappointment in her that her mother and her aunts had become so bitter. With every one of her succeeding birthdays it became more and more clear that the future would soon hold nothing more of surprise or anticipation for them. In maturing Reba had robbed the sisters of the joy of the unfulfilled.

Gazing down at the lights in the valley she told herself that another girl in her place would have re-created this gray mausoleum of a house, made of it a thing to shine and sparkle like other houses. She had only herself to blame for the unused, unlit front rooms, she supposed. Aunt Augusta had done her part. She had made ready the rooms at the proper time with new