But honestly, Phyl, I'm all in. I didn't eat any breakfast this morning. I'd kind of set myself not to eat till I got a job, and it sort of made me woozy."

"You dear precious old goose!" said Phyllis, catching her in her arms and kissing her. "You're going to have a cup of tea at once. There's plenty of tea at least for tonight. Why didn't you tell me before? You must be famished."

"No, I don't want any tea now," said Melissa. "I'd rather wait till Mother comes. I couldn't bear myself after all this fuss if I ate anything before the rest of you did. But where do you suppose Mother is? She always gets here sooner than this. It's perfectly dark, Phyl, and she's always here before dark, don't you know? Every time she has been to the hospital."

"Well," said Phyllis, anxiously getting up and going to the window, "you know, she may have had to go downtown afterward to get those bonds cashed. It may have taken some time. I don't know much about bonds, do you?"

"No, not much. I have a hazy idea of having studied them in math, but it doesn't mean a thing to me now. You don't think anything has happened to her, do you, Phyl?"

"No, of course not," said Phyllis briskly, with an assurance she was far from feeling. Then suddenly she turned swiftly away from the window.

"She's coming," she said and hurried back to the kitchenette, and there was in her voice something anxious mingled with the gladness, for she had seen a droop to her mother's tired figure as she walked past the streetlight in the gloom of the evening that filled Phyllis with a sudden alarm. Could anything have happened? Was Father worse? Was there some new menace? Phyllis had an almost uncanny way of divining the truth just before it occurred.

Rosalie had heard and came out of the closet with a sweet, radiant look upon her face. She went to putting the napkins around and drawing the chairs up. Phyllis was pouring the boiling water over the tea ball, and just a second before the front door opened Melissa struck up with her clear flutelike voice, that nevertheless quavered a little unnecessarily:

 

"Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home--"

and the other two slid into harmony from the kitchenette,

"Home, home, sweet, home--"

 

Mrs. Challenger closed the door and paused a second in the hall to get control of herself as the bravery of the music struck into her harrowed soul. Then she opened the hall door and stepped in, and they were upon her at once.

"Where have you been, dearest?" caroled Phyllis, seizing her wet umbrella and bearing it to the sink.

"We've been scared to death lest you had been run over," put in Melissa, unbuttoning her raincoat. "Why, Mother, you're wet to the skin! This raincoat has gone bad. And look at your feet! You didn't have any boots! Now, if we had done that! In this driving rain, too!"

"My dear, the soles of both boots gave out, and they flopped so they impeded my progress, so I took them off and threw them in the gutter!"

Mrs. Challenger was trying to laugh flippantly, but the girls could see a bright glitter of tears in her eyes.

"Oh, I'm glad you've come, Mother precious!" said Rosalie, putting her face up for a kiss.

"Sit right down in this chair, Mumsie," said Phyllis, "and get warm and drink yours first before you come out to dinner. Gaze on that hole in the wall called a register. Did you ever feel a heat like that come out of it before in all your experience?"

Mrs. Challenger sank into the chair that was pushed up for her and stretched her numbed fingers to the grateful heat.

"Oh, Phyllis! How did you manage it? What have you said to her?"

"She doesn't know a thing about it, Mumsie," exulted Phyllis. "She went away for the day--took the baby, locked up, left us without a spark of fire--and I went down and made it up. Do you think she'll put us all out, or send us to jail or anything?"

"You made the fire, dear? Oh, my dear Phyllis!"

"But isn't it wonderful?" said Rosalie dancing around and clapping her hands.

"But I didn't know you knew how to make a furnace fire," said the mother, who had never had to do such a thing in her whole life.

"Neither did I," laughed Phyllis. "But it's warm, isn't it?"

"But--hasn't Mrs. Barkus come back? What did she say?"

"No, she hasn't come yet.