But old Mam Daphne, bumping her scrubbing-brush over the kitchen floor, shook her woolly head sadly. She could remember the time when every day was a gala day in the old mansion, because it was always overflowing with guests to be entertained with free-handed hospitality. Store-room and smoke-house were filled to overflowing then, and there was a swarm of negro servants always in attendance. It hurt the faithful old mammy's pride to see one of her young mistress's daughters bending over the ironing-board, and to hear the other exclaiming over the fried chicken and frosted spice cake in the picnic basket, when such luxuries had once been their family's daily fare. She was their only servitor, now, coming once a week to scrub and clean.
[Illustration: "IT HURT THE FAITHFUL OLD MAMMY'S PRIDE"]
This morning she looked down the grass-grown walk to the broken-hinged gate and sighed. She was looking through a bower of climbing roses, but even the Gloire de Dijon, with its thousands of gold-hearted blossoms, could not hide the fact that the old place was fast going to decay.
To Claribel and Wilma, not yet out of their teens, repairs on the old house did not seem half so important as their own personal ones of shoe soles and skirt braids. It was their sister Agnes, ten years older, who shouldered all such worries.
There had been girls in the country place where they lived, girls of the best old families, too, who, feeling the pinch of poverty that followed the changed conditions of the South after the war, had gone away to teach school or learn typewriting. But Agnes, bringing up her sisters in strict accordance with the old family traditions, carefully weeded out of their young minds any such tendencies toward self-support. With the city only fifteen miles away, where they might have had the society and advantages they longed for, her prejudices and family pride kept them in their cage of circumstances, waiting helplessly like two irresponsible little canaries, for some outside hand to open the door.
[Illustration: "PAUSING IN HER SCRUBBING"]
"Honey," said Mam Daphne, pausing in her scrubbing as Claribel came into the kitchen for a hot iron, "I'se been studyin' ovah you-all's case right smaht, lately. You'se done had to move out'n de front o' de house, count o' de roof leakin', an' you shet up de west wing, so many windows was broke. Soon you-all will be movin' into de kitchen. Why don't you sell this great place fo' it goes clean to destruction, an' buy a little cottage jes' big enough fo' you three chillun? You'd be so much more comf'table."