Through These Fires (Musaicum Romance Classics). Grace Livingston Hill

the house could be rented if a tenant appeared. Now she was about to return to her college for the final term. Her train would leave that evening, and her bags were packed and ready. She was about to eat the simple lunch of scrambled eggs, bread and butter, and milk that she had but just prepared and set on the corner of the kitchen table when the doorbell rang and the telegram arrived. The telegram was from Elaine!

      Lexie stood in the open doorway shivering in the cold and read it, taking in the full import of each typewritten word and letting them beat in upon her heart like giant blows. Strangely it came to her as she read what her mother before her must have felt whenever Elaine had launched one of her drives for help. Only her mother had never let it be known how she felt. For the sake of the love she bore her husband and the promise she had made at his deathbed, she had borne it all sweetly. And now it was her turn, and her mother had expected her to do the same. But this was appalling! This was more than even Mother would have anticipated.

      Then she read the telegram again.

      "Dick in the Army fighting overseas. Reported missing in action. Probably dead.

      I am coming home with the children.

      Have been quite ill. Have rooms ready.

      Am bringing a nurse. Will reach the city five thirty P.M. Meet train with comfortable car.

      Elaine"

      Lexie grew weak all over and, turning, tottered into the house closing the door behind her. She went into the dining room and dropped down into a chair beside that lunch she had not eaten, laying her head down on her folded arms on the corner of the table, her heart crying out in discouragement. Now what was she to do? How like Elaine to spring a thing like this on her without warning. Giving orders as if she were a rich woman! Sending her word at the last minute so that it would be impossible to stop her.

      Lexie felt her head and looked at her watch. Could she possibly send a telegram to the train and stop her? Turn her back? Tell her she was about to leave for college? Her own train left at two thirty. There was no other train that night. What if she were to pay no attention to the telegram? Just let Elaine come on with her nurse and her three children and see what she had done! It was time she had a good lesson of course. She simply couldn't expect her sister to take over the burden of her life this way.

      On the other hand, there was her promise to her mother, and in fact, what would Elaine do if she arrived and found no car waiting, no house open, no key to open it?

      Well, she had a nurse with her, let them go to a hotel!

      But suppose she had no money? Still, she must have some money or she could not have bought her tickets and started. She couldn't have afforded a nurse. But then, of course, Elaine never bothered about affording anything. She always got what she wanted first and let somebody else worry about paying for it.

      But how did Elaine happen to telegraph to her here? Ah! She had not told her sister that she was expecting to go back to college during the midyear vacation and do a little studying while things were quiet. Elaine expected her to be here in the home of course, during holidays, as she invariably had been previously. If she had carried out her plans and that telegram had been a couple of hours later in arriving, she would have been gone and the telegram would not have found her. What then would have happened to Elaine? Well, why not go and let happen what would happen? Surely Elaine would find some way of taking care of her children. She couldn't exactly come down upon her at college. She wouldn't know where she had gone either. Why not go?

      It must have been five minutes that Lexie sat with her forehead down upon her folded hands trying to think this thing through. The same old fight that had shadowed all her life thus far! Was it going on to the end for her as it had gone on for her mother? Or should she make a stand now and stop it?

      And then would come the thought that Elaine seemed to be in real trouble now, her husband probably dead, herself sick—and very likely she really was! It didn't take much to make Elaine sick when things didn't happen her way. And those three children! She couldn't let them suffer because they happened to have an insufferable mother! She had never seen those three children, but children were always pathetic if they were in trouble! Oh, what should she do?

      Here she was ready to leave, just time to eat those cold scrambled eggs that had been so nice and hot when that telegram arrived. Her house was all ready either to close for the present or to rent if a tenant came, her things packed away under lock and key in the attic, and all her arrangements for the rest of the college year made. There was still time to take a taxi to the North Station and get her train before that western train arrived with the onslaught of the enemy, and yet she wasn't going to have the nerve to do it! She felt it in her heart behind all her indignation and bitter disappointment that she wasn't going to leave Elaine in a tight spot. She had been brought up a lady, and she couldn't do it. She had been taught to give even a little more than was asked, and she was going to go on doing it the rest of her life… maybe.

      But no! She wouldn't! She mustn't! She would just stay long enough to have a showdown with her sister. She would make her understand that there was no money anywhere and the job she had secured was on condition that she had finished her college course. She must do that or her whole life would suffer. She would let Elaine understand that she could not shoulder the burden of her family. She would stay long enough for that. It was what her mother probably should have done, and now it was her duty. She would try to be kind and sympathetic with Elaine in her sorrow, and she would try to help her back to a degree of health, but then she would make her understand that it was only right she should get a job herself and support her children. Yes, she would do that! She would not weaken. She had a right and a responsibility to think of herself and her own career, too. Of course even if she had to help Elaine financially, it was essential that she finish her course and get ready to earn as much as possible for them all. Yes, that was what she would do!

      And now, just how should she go about all this? Shouldn't she begin at once to be firm with Elaine? To let her understand that she couldn't afford taxis and cars? What ought she to do? Wire the train that Elaine must get a taxi, or just not make any reply at all? And how should she prepare for this unexpected invasion? For, indeed, it seemed to her as she lifted tear-filled eyes and looked about the room, like an invasion of an enemy.

      She felt condemned as the thought framed itself into words in her mind, but she had to accept the way she felt about it. And thinking back over the years and her mother's words from time to time, she knew this was something her mother would have told her she must do as far as was possible. Perhaps it would not turn out to be as bad as it promised. Perhaps it was only for a brief space while Elaine adjusted herself to her circumstances, but whatever it was, it was something that her mother would have expected her to do, something that perhaps God expected her to do.

      Not that Lexie had ever thought much about God except in a faraway, general way, but somewhere there was a Power that was commanding her. It was as if there was an ordeal ahead that challenged her. Why? Was it right she should go? It was like a wall of fire before her, through which she must pass, and there was now no longer a question whether she would go. She knew she would. The only thing was to work out just what was the wisest way to do it.

      With her eyes shut tight to force back the two tears that persisted in coming into them, Lexie kept her face down and pressed her temples to try and think. Whatever she was going to do for the winter, it was now, to-day, that she had to settle. She wasn't going to run away from the message that had come at this last minute. If this was an emergency, and a time of grief—and obviously it was—just common decency required that she do something about it. Therefore she must stay here in the house until Elaine came, and they could talk it out. She must see if her sister was really sick, sicker than she used to be sometimes when she just didn't want to go places and do things that seemed to be her duty. If she was really sick, of course, Lexie must stay and do something about it until some other arrangement could be made, sometime, somewhere. That could be held in abeyance until Elaine was here.

      Next, the house must be put in order to accommodate the oncoming guests, or else there must be some room or rooms hired somewhere to accommodate them. Undoubtedly the home would be the cheapest arrangement, unless it might open the way for Elaine to take too much for granted.