Their father patted her tenderly and said, “Honey, you’re finally learning how to manage, that’s all. That’s my girl!”

There was the time he brought home the high Spanish comb and the candied ginger and the talking machine with records. They played it nights for Aunt Lois and Grandma, but Aunt Lois was bad tempered, spoiling it all. In the middle of “Oh the moon shines tonight on pretty Red Wing as sung by Edison Records,” Aunt Lois said, “Harry, how much did that thing cost you? Don’t you think your family might like a few comforts before you spend your money on trash like this?”

Papa looked so bewildered and abused that Marcia felt a hot surge of anger, and she cried out in a choking voice, “We don’t want any comforts, Aunt Lois! We like the talking machine best!”

“Hush, dear,” said Mama, her face red.

“I’d send it back a-flying, if I was in your place, Daisy, and take the money instead,” said Aunt Lois firmly.

“You’re just jealous, Lois,” their mother cried out hotly. “Harry loves me and brings me presents and your husband hasn’t written you in ten years. I love the talking machine! I’d rather have it than anything in the world and Harry knows it!”

She threw her arms around his neck, sobbing, and he patted her, but his face was still dark and aggrieved.

“That’s what a fellow gets when he tries to do something nice for somebody,” he grumbled. “Always plenty of people to criticize.”

After Aunt Lois went, Mama comforted him, and even sent him out to the saloon for a pint of beer. That night the children heard him playing the guitar long after they were asleep. He sang, “Oh, Bedelia, oh, Bedelia, I’ve a longing for to steal you, oh, Bedelia.” When they heard the gramophone playing again, “Oh the moon shines tonight on pretty Red Wing,” they rolled into each other’s arms to sleep, happy because he was happy again.

4

WHEREVER GRANDMA STAYED was “Grandma’s house,” though the London Junction place was really Aunt Lois’s, left her by her absent husband’s father, and a great burden to her in size and taxes. But while Aunt Lois whisked briskly up and down stairs with mop and broom and a towel around her head, eternally busy at keeping the big house in order, Grandma rocked on the side porch with her darning bag, visiting with her friends and keeping up an air of gracious leisure. Ever since she had given up the Elmville farm she talked of having a place of her own, “being independent” as she said. But her children balked her in this by making her stay for a while first with one and then the other. She managed to sustain a feeling of independence at Aunt Lois’s by making plans for a millinery store, a tea-room, or a dress-making shop. Aunt Lois was always catching her with the grass blinds of the porch drawn, in low-voiced conferences with furtive little people who had a store to let or a business to sell. Aunt Lois recently had taken in schoolteachers as roomers, but one time she found that in her absence Grandma had admitted two night workers from the foundry.