By Pansy.

CHAPTER I.

MARGARET was washing the dishes; making a vigorous clash and spatter, and setting down the cups so hard that had they been anything but the good solid iron-stone which they were, they would certainly have suffered under the treatment.

Margaret was noisy in all things, but to-day the usual vigor of movement was manifestly increased by ill humor. There was an ominous setting of a pair of firm lips, and all her face was in a frown. The knives and forks, when their turn came, seemed to increase her ire. She rattled and flung them about with such reckless disregard of consequences that there landed, presently, a lovely tricolored globe of foam in the centre of John’s arithmetic, over which he was at this moment gloomily bending.

“Look here,” he said, half fiercely, half comically, “quit that, will you? This thing is dry enough, I know; but it will take more than soap suds to dampen it.”

“Take your book out of my way, then. What do you s’pose she would say to its being on the table and you bending double over it?”

“She may say just exactly what she pleases. It will stay on the table until I get ready to take it off.”

“O yes! you’re very brave until you hear her coming, and then you are as meek as Moses.”

“Now I say, Mag, that’s mean in you, when you know well enough that all I’m after is to try to keep the peace.”

“Peace! there isn’t enough of that article left in this house to make it worth while to try to save it. I’m sick to death of the whole thing.” And the knives bumped about against a plate in the dish-pan with such force that the plate rebelled and flew into three pieces in its rage.

“There goes another dish!” exclaimed West, from the window corner where he was busily whittling; “that makes the seventeenth this week, doesn’t it? Mag, you are awful, and no mistake.”

Then Margaret’s face flamed and her angry words burst their bounds: “I wish you would just mind your own business, Weston Moore! You think because you are eighteen months and seven days older than I, that you can order me around like a slave.”

“Whew! bless my eyes! How you do blaze out on a fellow! Who thought of ordering you around? I should as soon think of ordering a cyclone. I was only moralizing on the sweet and amiable mood you were in, and the nice comfortable times we have in this house.”

“Well, you may let my moods alone if you please; and my dishes too. I’ve a right to break them all if I choose, for all you. I’d rather blaze up in a rage, than be an everlasting tease and torment, like you.”

“Father’ll have a word to say about the dishes, I fancy, my lady; you might now and then think of him: he isn’t made of gold, I s’pose you know, and dishes cost money.”

“I do think of him a great deal oftener than you do, you great lazy, whittling, whistling boy! If it wasn’t for him I’d run away, and be rid of her and you, and all the other nuisances, dishes and all.”

She paused in her clatter long enough to dash away two or three great tears which were plashing down her hot red cheeks.

“As to that,” said the whittler, as he slowly closed his jack-knife, “perhaps you better seriously consider it. I’m not sure but it would be more comfortable for all concerned; especially the dishes.” Then he spied the tears; and seizing upon the dish towel which had been angrily flung across the back of a chair, he rushed toward his sister, exclaiming: “Here, let me wipe away those briny drops.”

Margaret’s hands were in the dishwater again, but she drew them forth all dripping with the greasy suds, and brought the right one with a resounding slap, about the curly head of the mocking boy.

Just how he would have received it will not be known; for the sudden jerk backwards of the left arm, came against the full dish-pan, already set too near the edge of the table, and over it went, deluging table, floor, and Margaret’s dress not only, but pouring a greasy flood over the rows of bread tins carefully covered, and set in a sheltered corner for the dough to rise.

Margaret’s exclamation of dismay was suddenly checked, and the angry color flamed back into her eyes as the door leading into the hall opened, and a woman appeared on the scene—a tall, pale woman in a plain, dark, close-fitting calico dress, without a collar, and with dark, almost black hair combed straight back from a plain face. She gave a swift glance at the confusion, and took in the situation.

“Quarreling again! I might have known it. Were you three ever together in your lives, without it? John, let the book alone until it dries; if it had not been on the kitchen table where I told you never to have it, the dishwater wouldn’t have ruined it. And the bread too! I declare! This is too bad!” These last words came in detached sentences as the extent of the misfortune grew upon her.

A quick snatch of the carefully tucked cloth, now holding little pools of dishwater, a comprehension of the utter ruin of the many loaves of bread, and she turned upon the wrathful girl:

“Margaret, go upstairs this minute, and don’t venture down again until you are called. I’m sure I wish you need never come.”

“You can’t begin to wish it as I do.” This was Margaret’s last bitter word as she shot out of the door.

John stood dolefully surveying his soaking arithmetic, and his great sheet of now ruined examples, carefully worked out. The woman was already tucking up her calico dress ready for work, but she had a message for him.

“Now you go somewhere; don’t let me see you until dinner time. And mind, I shall tell your father you have disobeyed me again.”

As for Weston the tease, he had slipped swiftly and silently from the room with the entrance of the mother.

Yes, she was their mother. At least, she was their father’s wife, though none of the three had ever called her by the name of mother. A curious position she held in the home, bound by solemn pledge to do a mother’s duty by these three children, yet receiving from none of them a shred of the love, or respect, or true obedience, which the name mother ought to call forth.

Poor Mrs. Moore! I do hope you are sorry for her. Sorry for the children, are you? Well, so am I.

Indeed it is true, they every one need pity and help. The question is, Will they get what they need?

Upstairs, angry Margaret made haste to remove her much soiled dress, eyes flashing, and cheeks burning the while. Something more than the scenes we watched in the kitchen had to do with Margaret’s mood.

A green and prickly chestnut bur came whizzing into the room, landing in the middle of her bed.

It called forth an angry exclamation. Here was some more of that tormenting West’s work. She would not stand it! She made a rush for the window, but a low, merry laugh stopped her. This was not West’s laugh.

“Well,” said Hester Andrews, from under the chestnut-tree, “can you go?”

“No; of course I can’t. I should think you might know without asking. Do I ever go anywhere now days?”

“It is just too mean for anything!” declared Hester. “What reason does she give this time?”

There was a peculiar emphasis on the word “this,” which was meant to indicate that here was only one of the numberless times in which Margaret Moore had been shamefully treated, Margaret answered the tone as well as the words.

“Oh! father says he can’t have me out so late in the evening; it isn’t the thing for a little girl, and he doesn’t approve of sail boats, anyway. As if I didn’t know where all that stuff came from!”

“The idea! I declare, it’s a perfect shame. Wouldn’t you like to see your own mother keeping you at home from places, and treating you like a baby, or a slave, as she does?”

“Don’t you speak my mother’s name the same day you do hers,” said Margaret, with fierce voice and flashing eyes.

“Well, I’m sure I don’t wonder that you feel so,” was Hester’s soothing answer. “I’m just as sorry for you as I can be; I wonder sometimes that you don’t run away. Every one says it comes harder on you, because you are a girl: the boys can keep out of her sight. O Mag! I’m so sorry you can’t go. If your mother were only here, what lovely times we could have?”

And this was the help which Margaret’s most intimate friend brought her! In point of fact, these two knew no more of what the mourned mother would have done, than did the squirrels up in the chestnut-tree. She had been lying in the cemetery for a year when Hester Andrews’ family moved into the town, and Margaret was only a busy little elf of not quite six, when she received with gleeful laughter her mother’s last kiss. What did she know how the mother would treat the thirteen-year-old girl’s longings for sail boats and evening parties?

Downstairs, Mrs. Moore left to solitude and bitter thoughts, worked with swift, skilled fingers, and set lips. Not long alone; some one came to help her—a sister, married, and living at ease in a lovely home only a few streets away; a younger sister who was sorry, so blindly and unwisely sorry for the elder’s harder lot, that she could not keep back her words of indignant sympathy.

“It’s a shame!” she said, “just a burning shame, the way you are treated by those children. The idea of your being down on your knees mopping up the musses which they have made, on purpose to vex you. If I were you, Sophia, I wouldn’t endure it another day. It is a wonder to me that their father permits such a state of things. Henry and I were speaking of it last night.”

“Their father doesn’t know the half that goes on,” Mrs. Moore said, speaking quickly in defence of her husband. “What is the use? We live in an uproar all the time, as it is. And after all, Emma, they are his children.”

“I don’t care. You are his wife. You owe something to your self respect. Henry thinks so too; he thinks it is a shame. Why do you go on the floor and clean after them? Isn’t that girl as able to mop up her dishwater as you are?”

Mrs. Moore wrung the wet, greasy cloth with a nervous grip, letting some of the soiled drops trickle down her arm, in her haste, and answered with eyes that glowed:

“To tell the truth, I would scrub the floor after her all day, for the sake of getting her out of my sight for an hour.”

And this was the help Mrs. Moore received.