August was over and our girls were not sorry. The camp had been like an ant hill all during that month of holidays. Not that it had been a month of holidays for the Carters, far from it. There had been times when they did not see how they could accomplish the work they had undertaken. They were two hands short almost all of the month which made the work fall very heavily on the ones who were left. Gwen was taken up with Aunt Mandy, the kind old mountain woman who had been so good to the little English orphan. Now that Aunt Mandy was ill, Gwen felt it her duty to be with her day and night. Susan was so busy waiting on Mrs. Carter that she never had time for her regular duties in the kitchen.

Lewis and Bill were terribly missed. They had done so many things for the campers, had been so strong and willing and untiring in their service that the girls felt the place could hardly be run without them. Skeeter and Frank did all they could but they were but slips of lads after all and there were many things where a man’s strength was necessary.

Mr. Carter was glad to help when he was called on, but he did not seem to see the things that were to be done without having them pointed out. When there was much of a crowd he rather shrank from the noise and the girls felt they must not let him be made nervous by the confusion. Of course there was much confusion when twenty and more boarders would arrive at once, have to be hauled up the mountain and assigned tent room and then as Oscar would say, “have to be filled up.” The girls would do much giggling and screaming; the young men would laugh a great deal louder than their jokes warranted, and the boys seemed to think that camp was a place especially designed for practical jokes.

It was a common thing to hear shrieks from the tents when the crowd was finally made to retire by the chaperone, and then the cry, “Ouch! Chestnut burrs in my bed!” Once it was a lemon meringue pie, brought all the way from Richmond by an inveterate joker who felt that a certain youth was too full of himself and needed taking down a peg! Now there is nothing much better than a lemon meringue pie taken internally, but of all the squashy abominations to find in one’s bed and to have applied externally, a lemon meringue pie is the worst.

It was as a censor of practical jokes that Douglas and Helen missed the young soldiers most. They had been wont to stand just so much and no more from the wild Indians who came to Camp Carter for the week-end, and now that there was no one to reach forth a restraining hand, there was no limit to the pranks that were played.

Mrs. Carter felt that the job of chaperone for such a crowd was certainly no sinecure. She complained quite bitterly of her duties. After all, they consisted of having the new-comers introduced to her and of presiding at supper and of staying in the pavilion until bed time. Miss Elizabeth Somerville had made nothing of it, and one memorable night when there was too much racket going on from the tents the boys occupied, she had arisen from her bed in the cabin and, wrapped in a dressing gown and armed with an umbrella, had marched to the seat of war and very effectively quelled the riot by laying about her with said umbrella.

The girls looked back on her reign, regretting that it was over. It was lovely to have their mother with them again but she was quite different from the mother they had known in Richmond in the luxurious days. That mother had always been gentle while this one had a little sharp note to her voice that was strange to them. It was most noticeable when she had expressed some desire that was not immediately gratified.

“I am quite tired of chicken,” she said to Douglas one day. “I wish you would order some sweetbreads for me. I need building up. This rough life is very hard on me and nothing but my being very unselfish and devoted makes me put up with it.”

“Yes, mother! I am sorry, but my order for this week is in the mail and I could not change it now, but I will send a special order for some Texas sweetbreads to Charlottesville. I have no doubt I can get them there.”

Either the order or the sweetbreads went astray. Mrs. Carter refused to eat any dinner in consequence and sulked a whole day.

“If she only doesn’t complain to father we can stand it,” Douglas confided to Nan. “What are we going to do, Nan? I am so afraid she will make father feel he must go back to work, and then all the good of the rest will be done away with. She treats me, somehow, as though it were all my fault.”

“Oh no, honey, you mustn’t feel that way. Poor little mumsy is just spoiled to death and does not know how to adapt herself to this change of fortune.”

“You see, Nan, now that Mr. Lane has had to go to Texas with the militia the business is at a standstill. He was trying to fill the orders they had on their books without father’s help.”

“Yes, Mr. Tucker said that father’s business was a one man affair and when that one man, father, was out of the running there was nothing to do about it. Thank goodness, father is not worrying about things himself.”

“I know we should be thankful, but somehow his not worrying makes it just so much more dreadful. I feel that he is even more different than mother. It is an awful problem—what to do.”

“What’s a problem?” asked Helen, coming suddenly into the tent where her sisters were engaged in the above conversation.

“Oh, just—just—nothing much!” faltered Douglas.

“Now that’s a nice way to treat a partner. You and Nan are always getting off and whispering together and not letting me in on it. What’s worrying you?”

“The situation!”

“Political or climatic?”

“Carteratic!” drawled Nan. “We were talking about mother and father.”

“What about them? Is father worse?” Helen was ever on the alert when her father’s well-being was in question.

“No, he is better in some ways, but unless he is kept free from worry he will never be well,” said Douglas solemnly.

She had not broached the subject of money with Helen since the question of White Sulphur had been discussed by them, feeling that Helen would not or could not understand.

“Who’s going to worry him? Not I!”

“Of course not you. Just the lack of money is going to worry him, and he is going to feel the lack of it if mother wants things and can’t have them.”

“Why don’t you let her have them?”

“How can I? I haven’t the wherewithal any more than you.”

“I thought we were making money.”

“So we are, but not any great amount. I think it is wonderful that we have been able to support ourselves and put anything in the bank. I had to draw out almost all of our earnings to pay for the things mother bought in New York, not that I wasn’t glad to do it, but that means we have not so much to go on for the winter.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake don’t be worrying about the winter now! Mother says our credit is so good we need not worry a bit.”

Douglas and Nan looked at each other sadly. Douglas turned away with a “what’s the use” expression. Helen looked a little defiant as she saw her sister’s distress.

“See here, Helen!” and this time Nan did not drawl. Helen realized her little sister was going to say something she must listen to. “You have got a whole lot of sense but you have got a whole lot to learn. I know you are going to laugh at me for saying you have got to learn a lot that I, who am two years younger than you, already know. You have got to learn that our poor little mumsy’s judgment is not worth that,” and Nan snapped her finger.

“Nan! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“Well, I am ashamed of myself, but I am telling the truth. I don’t see the use in pretending any more about it. I love her just as much, but anyone with half an eye can see it. I think what we must do is to face it and then tactfully manage her.”

Douglas and Helen could not help laughing at Nan.

“You see,” she continued, “it is up to us to support the family somehow and make mumsy comfortable and keep her from telling father that she hasn’t got all she wants. Of course she can’t have all she wants, but she can be warm and fed at least.”

“But, Nan, it isn’t up to you to support the family,” said Douglas. “You must go back to school, you and Lucy.”

“Well, it is up to me to spend just as little money as possible and to earn some if I can. I am not going to be a burden on you and Helen. You needn’t think it.”

“We’ll have the one hundred from the rent of the house and then Helen and I shall have to find jobs. What, I don’t know.”

“Well, I, for one, can’t find a job until I get some new clothes,” declared Helen. “I haven’t a thing that is not hopelessly out of style.”

“Can’t your last winter’s suit be done over? Mine can.”

“Now, Douglas, what’s the use in going around looking like a frump? I think we should all of us get some new clothes and then waltz in and get good jobs on the strength of them. If I were employing girls I should certainly choose the ones who look the best.”

Douglas shook her head sadly. Helen was Helen and there was no making her over. She would have to learn her lesson herself and there was no teaching her.

“Dr. Wright says we must keep father out of the city this winter but we need not be in the dead country. We can get a little house on the edge of town so Nan and Lucy can go in to school. I think we can get along on the rent from the house if you and I can make something besides.”

When the question of where they were to live for the winter was broached to Mrs. Carter, she was taken quite ill and had to stay in bed a whole day.

“No one considers me at all,” she whimpered to Nan, who had brought her a tray with some tea and toast for her luncheon. “Just because you and Douglas like the country you think it is all right. I am sure I shall die in some nasty little frame cottage in the suburbs. It is ridiculous that we cannot turn those wretched people out of my house and let me go back and live in it again.”

“But, mumsy,” soothed Nan, “we are going to make you very comfortable and we will find a pretty house and maybe it will be brick.”

“But to dump me down in the suburbs when I have had to be away from society for all these months as it is! I am sure if I could talk it over with your father he would agree with me—but you girls even coerce me in what I shall and shall not say to my own husband. I do not intend to submit to it any longer.”

“Oh, mother, please—please don’t tell father. Dr. Wright says——”

“Don’t tell me what Dr. Wright says! I am bored to death with what he says. I know he has been kind but I can’t see that our affairs must be indefinitely directed by him. I will sleep a little now if you will let me be quiet.”