That was a consolation.

Her vigorous efforts soon subdued the closet so that everything was neatly hung up and the door shut. A few old summer hats and coats she put in a pile on the stairs to take up when she went, and standing back, surveyed her work, well pleased. If only the old rug were swept and the edges of the floor wiped around with oil! But she could not stop for everything. They could hire a servant to do that.

She was about to go upstairs when the dining-room asserted itself. Of what use to clean up the hall with a great open doorway into a place like that? The side-board at least must be tidied.

Doubling her speed, she flew around in the dining-room straightening and dusting, the pile of things to go upstairs growing larger and larger. She hesitated at the dining table after removing with uplifted nose and disdainful lips the soiled dishes. Could she leave that dirty tablecloth on? It was stiff with egg and ham gravy, stained with watermelon and peaches and berries, besides being grimy with dust and full of holes. A search in the sideboard revealed two others in like stages of decline. With a sudden set of her lips she bundled them all three together, and put them out in one of the laundry tubs. At least, a bare table was better than dirt.

She dusted everything. The old china-closet with its glass sides and shelves appealed to her strangely. It was almost empty of china and silver and glass. Nearly every dish the house contained seemed to be piled in the kitchen dirty. This china-closet must once have been something of which her mother was proud. A kind of pity for the decadent, inanimate articles of furniture took possession of her as she worked. Somehow she seemed to come nearer to the thought of her mother than she had been since the day of the funeral.

The dining room at last was set to rights, and she turned to fly upstairs. Two cars had already made their passage cityward since she began, and she must hurry or there would be no time at all for lunch before the concert. But from the dining-room door she had a full view of the unhappy parlor in its grim loneliness, and her heart forbade her to leave it. She must put some semblance of decency into it before she left. Perhaps it would be better to do the parlor and let Jack’s room go this time.

She sped to work once more, and soon had straightened the pictures and ornaments on the mantel, removed the hats and coats to places in the hall closet, picked up the papers, placed the chairs invitingly, and dusted. The whole vista was now much more serene than when she had entered the house, but still it was not at all what it ought to be.

“It needs a thorough good housecleaning!” she said aloud. “And I declare I’d like to do it if I had time! But of course that’s out of the question.”

She hastened upstairs, passing resolutely by the second story, on up to Jack’s room. Somehow the thought of her younger brother had taken strong hold upon her.

She looked about this second time with a kind of determined despair. Where should she start? How could she accomplish anything? The whole place needed to be shoveled out, and cleaned, and started over again. Why hadn’t he taken her room instead of keeping up here where she knew he hated it?

A sudden instinct revealed to her that her room had been left a kind of shrine that kept the desolated home together. Had they hoped she would sometime come back to them, and left her room as it had been for her! It was a gloomy little room, old-fashioned and small and inconvenient, with nothing valuable in it; but it had been let alone, and her things remained untouched even when the rest of the family had been in need. The thought pierced into her conscience, and stirred it uneasily from its long contented sleep. Was there, then, a possibility that she ought to have come home, at least sometimes, and been a daughter to the house?

She put the thought ungraciously, half defiantly aside and sailed into that room.

She had to begin at the very entrance, for the floor was literally covered with garments and other articles. She systematically sorted them out. Soiled shirts, cuffs, socks, old shoes and new shoes, overcoats and cast-off neckties galore, of every possible combination of all the colors of the rainbow, old automobile-tires, a book on electrical engineering, several on chemistry, some sporting-papers, a football uniform, a pair of overalls, moth-eaten suits of clothes tumbled down anywhere! It was appalling! And everywhere were cigarette-ends and burnt matches.