Page:To-morrow Morning (1927).pdf/92

 Charlotte moved in with her small trunk, the doll's bureau that held four pairs of white kid gloves, and a light-blue sateen parasol with pinked edges that Jodie admired above everything. He marched about the house under it, like a mouse under a flax flower, and only Charlotte's piercing shrieks stopped him from borrowing it to carry to Laddie Baylow's through the rain.

"Of course it's only for a little while," Kate told herself, feeling, now the studio was occupied, that there was nothing in the world she wanted as much as long uninterrupted days of painting there. But Charlotte was in it, a good, square little girl with spectacles, dressed in a brown serge dress with a white guimpe, saying, "Yes, please, Aunt Kate," and "No, thank you, Aunt Kate," and crying quietly after she had gone to bed, from homesickness.

Kate wrote to the men she knew Joe had borrowed from, to ask how much it was, and say she would pay them as soon as she could. And each man answered that Joe had paid him before he died.

Some of them wanted to help her now, but she had a sick terror of borrowing. She would get along without it if she could. She would find work somehow, get orders for portraits, or give lessons.

She tried to explain to Lizzie that she couldn't afford to keep her any more.

"I'm sure I've tried to suit you!" said Lizzie, sniffing, banging the oven door, refusing to look at Kate.