Betsey sat up with a rueful exclamation, and Jimmy grunted a disconsolate "Gosh!" but Susan only smiled.
"That's only part of her--trouble, Phil," she said, reassuringly. And presently she serenely led them all upstairs. "We've got to make those beds, Betts," said Susan.
"Mother may hear us," said Betsey, fearfully.
"I hope she will!" Susan said. But, if she did, no sound came from the mother's room. After awhile Susan noticed that her door, which had been ajar, was shut tight.
She lay awake late that night, Betts' tear-stained but serene little face close to her shoulder, Betts' hand still tight in hers. The wind shook the casements, and the unwearied storm screamed about the house. Susan thought of the woman in the next room, wondered if she was lying awake, too, alone with sick and sorrowful memories?
She herself fell asleep full of healthy planning for to-morrow's meals and house-cleaning, too tired and content for dreams.
Anna came quietly home on the next Saturday evening, to find the little group just ready to gather about the dinner-table. A fire glowed in the grate, the kitchen beyond was warm and clean and delightfully odorous. She said very little then, took her share, with obvious effort at first, in their talk, sat behind Betsey's chair when the four presently were coaxed by Jim into a game of "Hearts," and advised her little sister how to avoid the black queen.
But later, just before they went upstairs, when they were all grouped about the last of the fire, she laid her hands on Susan's shoulders, and stood Susan off, to look at her fairly.
"No words for it, Sue," said Anna steadily.
"Ah, don't, Nance--" Susan began. But in another instant they were in each other's arms, and crying, and much later that evening, after a long talk, Betsey confided to Susan that it was the first time Anna had cried.
"She told me that when she got home, and saw the way that you have changed things," confided Betsey, "she began to think for the first time that we might--might get through this, you know!"
Wonderful days for Susan followed, with every hour brimming full of working and planning. She was the first one up in the morning, the last one in bed at night, hers was the voice that made the last decision, and hers the hands for which the most critical of the household tasks were reserved. Always conscious of the vacant place in their circle, and always aware of the presence of that brooding and silent figure upstairs, she was nevertheless so happy sometimes as to think herself a hypocrite and heartless. But long afterward Susan knew that the sense of dramatic fitness and abiding satisfaction is always the reward of untiring and loving service.