The wonder was the house had not been set on fire. There were several candle-ends on the floor and the chest of drawers, and a good many photographs of football and baseball teams scattered about.

Steadily she progressed into the room until she came to the bed and the snarl of queer bedclothes. Then without any warning at all a great lump came to her throat, and the tears rained down her cheeks. To think that her brother should be sleeping in a bed like this, without sufficient clothing to keep him warm and clean, and with no one to care for things and make them comfortable for him after he had been working hard all day!

“For all the world like a drunkard’s home!” she said aloud, and choked over the words. Could it be that that was the matter? Could it be that her father really drank much?

She could remember the young brother when she was a little girl, how proud she had been of him. He had had round red cheeks and long golden curls. Her mother had cried when they had to be cut off, and cherished them in a little box put away somewhere now in her own bureau drawer in the little room downstairs. Somehow these remembrances did not serve to stop her tears.

There literally was not any way to make that bed respectable with the material at hand. The old plaid blanket shawl was thin, worn, and torn. The old honeycomb spread that served for an upper sheet was gray with age. The pillow was impossible, and the sheet was in actual shreds. It was fit for nothing but a bonfire. Elsie gathered all in reluctant fingers, trying to think what to do about that bed. She could not put that sheet on again, and she must make up that bed somehow. It would not do for her to take away the only bed Jack had and give him nothing in its place.

At last she had the room in tolerable order, all but the bed. There was a large bundle of soiled things done up for the laundry; the few clean shirts and collars she had found among the debris were arranged neatly in the bureau drawers; the things she did not know what to do with were on the top of the chest of drawers, which was dusted; the books were piled in an orderly row against the wall; and the old clothes that needed to be thrown away were collected and put into the empty back room. There was at least clear space to step about it now, and there remained but to make up some kind of a bed. Then she must go.

She looked at her watch. It was five minutes after one. If she could find something downstairs for the bed, she might get it made up in time to catch the car at twenty-five minutes after one. She could at least get home in time to dress for the concert.

She hurried downstairs, carrying at arm’s length a bundle of things which she intended to burn in the back yard; and having set them on fire, she went upstairs again to hunt for sheets and bedclothes.

But the frantic search revealed only more lack in the household fittings. Her father’s bed was supplemented by two old coats and a bath-robe. Eugene’s had the blankets doubled, and apparently he used only one side of the bed. Several old quilts badly torn and soiled were all she could find in the way of extra bedding, and these were so dilapidated that she put them at once out of the question.

She stood dismayed in the middle of her father’s room, and looked about again. How could she go back to her aunt’s and sleep in the pretty brass bed that was hers, with its rose blankets, its fine sheets and pillow-cases, its dainty blue silk elder down quilt that had been a recent birthday present from her aunt, and think of her father and brothers lying in squalor and discomfort? She simply could not do it! She could never live with herself again until her conscience had been set at rest about this. She must do something about it.

Investigation in her own former room revealed the fact that there were no sheets or blankets there, only the meagre ancient spread that had once been white, kept there to hold the semblance of a bed for her.

What could have become of all the bedding? Could bedding wear utterly out like that, and disappear? Or could it be that Rebecca or some other servant had carried things off little by little? Well, whatever was the explanation, the things were gone, and others must somehow be provided, or there would be no more peace for her. Moreover, she had discovered that she could no longer be satisfied with clearing up Jack’s room, she must also make her father’s and Gene’s rooms decent before she left. She must, in fact, put the whole of that house into some sort of order, or she could never be happy again; and she must find a way to make those three beds comfortable before night, symphony concert notwithstanding.

Downstairs in her hand-bag was thirty dollars saved from her last birthday present. She had intended using it to have her photograph taken at a famous photographer’s. She had meant to indulge in a really artistic photograph, and had saved up for the purpose.