The Challengers E-Book

Grace Livingston Hill

• Herausgeber: Reading Essentials
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The Challengers are a family caught up in struggles that threaten to tear their world apart...

Leseprobe

The Challengers

by Grace Livingston Hill

First published in 1932

This edition published by Reading Essentials

Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

The Challengers

by

Grace Livingston Hill

CHAPTER ONE

The room was cold. Phyllis shivered as she took her hands out of the dishwater to reach for a pile of plates that stood on the inadequate little table behind her. The table was inadequate because there wasn't room for a larger one. Everything in the tiny dark hole that passed for a kitchenette was cramped. One had to turn around carefully lest something be knocked over.

Phyllis tossed her head to get the refractory lock of hair out of her eyes and, failing, pushed it back with her elbow then shivered again. The apartment was supposed to have heat in it, but the radiators had been stone cold all day, and when she tapped on the door of the landlady's room down the hall there was no answer, although Phyllis was sure she was there. She had heard her scolding her baby but a moment before. But, of course, that was because the rent wasn't paid. When Phyllis remembered that, she beat a hasty retreat back to her cold room. She had no desire to bring down upon her lonely young self a tirade such as her mother had had to endure the evening before, just because she had told the old skinflint that she would not be able to pay the rent for another week.

Unbidden, a great hot tear rolled down her white cheek and dropped into the dishwater.

The dishwater was cold, too. Phyllis had tried to heat some water because the dishes were greasy, leftover from last night to save heating dishwater twice. But the gas had flickered and gone out under the kettle before it was more than lukewarm, and Phyllis had not another quarter to put into the meter to start it again. That meter was always eating up quarters. This cold dishwater in the cold room with the greasy dishes seemed just the last straw, and another tear followed the first one.

But Phyllis Challenger was not a crying person, and with the upper part of her sleeve she wiped her eyes defiantly and applied a little more soap to the greasy plate she was washing, setting her lips firmly. Things did look pretty bleak, but she was not going to let a mere greasy plate in a cold room conquer her. Mother had enough to worry her now without having anyone of her family give way to weakness. If they were all going to starve to death, she resolved that at least she, Phyllis, would die smiling.

When the dishes were done and the clammy towels hung up to dry, she scrubbed away at the ugly sink with a worn old sink brush.

"How I hate you!" she said aloud to the rusty iron sink that the landlady had bought for fifty cents from a junk man when she bungled her rickety old dwelling over into a so-called "apartment" house.

She washed her hands in clear cold water from the spigot many times. She must not waste the soap for mere hands. Thank goodness there wasn't any extra charge for water at least. Of course, there was a water meter in the house, but the landlady looked out for that. She took a good drink of water to still the empty feeling in her stomach and cast a wistful glance at the bread box. Nothing but half a loaf of Mother's homemade bread left. It had been hoarded carefully and was dry as could be, but it would soak in hot water, if she only had a quarter to start the gas with to heat the water. But dry as it was, how good a little piece of it would taste! Only, if she took a piece now and it should just happen that Mother was not able to get any money yet, perhaps this half loaf would be all they would have for the whole family for supper. She measured the loaf with her eye. Cut in thin slices, there was barely enough for a portion each: Mother, Bob, Melissa, and Rosalie. Lucky thing Stephen wasn't home, or it never could be made to go around.

Home! As if anybody could call this a home!

Phyllis slammed the bread box shut, took another drink of water, and went into the little front room, which was both living room and Bob's bedroom. The squalid apartment contained only one other room, a small bedroom, nearly full with its two beds, a bureau, and a dresser. They could just barely crowd around between the furniture. One had to sit on the side of the bed to open the drawers of the bureau. Phyllis and Mother slept in one of the beds and Melissa and Rosalie in the other. It was just like berths in a sleeper. Phyllis sighed. Would they ever go on nice long vacation journeys in a sleeper again? Would they ever have a car like other people and drive away to the shore for weekends and trips?

She went to the window and looked out on the dismal little street, sordid and grimy. It was a narrow street with rows of two-story brick houses facing one another across uneven old brick-paved sidewalks where on certain days one had to pick one's way between garbage pails and trash cans. Such a terrible place for a family of a college professor to have to live, even for a little while! Would Father ever get well and be able to come out of the hospital? Would he ever be able to get back to teaching and they all live in a respectable house again? Low down, that was what this was! Just plain low down and disgusting, like drunkards' homes. That was what Phyllis thought. Her experience in drunkards' homes had been limited, however. There really were worse streets than Slacker Street, even in that city.

She continued to gaze out of the window, hoping against hope that she would see her mother coming. It had begun to rain, steadily, drearily, which only seemed to accentuate the coldness of the room. The windowpanes had diagonal trickles like tears so that it was hard to see out, but the girl continued to press her cheek against the pane and gaze wistfully up the street. If Mother would only come and bring some good news, somehow!

There were patches of dirty snow in the gutter here and there, and across the road in the narrow passage between two houses, one of which was unoccupied, a drift of snow was banked untidily against the two walls where no one had passed in and out since the winter months.

A gaunt gray cat streaked warily across the road and disappeared down the alley. A little wet mongrel dog hurried down the sidewalk as if on some special errand. A woman under a bent cotton umbrella with a large basket on her arm walked painfully by on the opposite side. She was lame, and she was wearing a man's shoes, which were too large for her. She made slow progress. Her long untidy skirts sloshed drearily about her ankles, drabbling into every puddle she passed. What a sordid thing life was! Tears threatened again, and Phyllis turned with a shiver back to the dreary room, casting an anxious eye about. If she only could do something to make it look a little more cheerful when Mother came back. She would be wet and tired and cold. How wonderful it would be if they could have a fire, an open fire! But the high wooden mantelpiece only sheltered an inadequate little old-fashioned register up which nothing was coming now but cold air. The landlady had gone out for the afternoon evidently, and the fire must have gone out, too.

Phyllis went and put on her old sweater, then she opened the hall door cautiously and listened. There was no sound anywhere, neither baby nor landlady. An odd time to take a baby out in a rain like this, but either that or they were both asleep, which was not likely at this hour of the day. Dared she?

She tiptoed to the woman's door and listened, tapped softly again and listened, but there was no sound save the noise of the landlady's little dog thumping his tail in a friendly way on the floor, whining gently. Yes, they surely were gone and had left the dog in the house to guard it.

Phyllis had never been in the cellar. It was not a part of their province. But she was going now. Love for her mother gave her courage.

With a defiant look toward the closed door of the householder, she grasped the knob of the cellar door and opened it cautiously, looking down into the forbidding shadows below the steep winding stair.

Cautiously, she ventured down a step or two and peered again. There seemed to be no place to turn on a light. Perhaps a gas jet somewhere, but how was she to find out its location? Could she do anything in the cellar without a light? She remembered a short candle and hurried back to her kitchen for it, a little anxious about having to use it. She must save even a candle and a match if possible. How terrible life was! There were only nine matches left. She had counted them this morning; but she must use one to light the candle, for she could not do a thing to a strange furnace in the dark. Perhaps she could not anyway. She had never made a furnace fire in her life. She had never had to. But now she had to; and what one had to, one always could do, she firmly believed.

With her candle casting flickering shadows before her, she descended at last into that awful cellar. One dismayed glance she cast about her at the dirt and disorder and then walked straight over to the grim rusty object that must be the furnace.

The door stuck, and she had hard work to get it open, but after much tugging, it gave way and revealed a dark cavern inside with just a spunk of fire winking as if it were about to expire. No wonder the house had been cold! And that woman had taken her baby and gone out and left the house cold on purpose! That was probably the truth. She had done it because Mother had not been able to pay last month's rent last night when she had promised!

Phyllis's cheeks burned hotly even while she shivered. To think that they, the Challengers, had come to this, to have a common lodging-housekeeper punish them because they could not pay the rent on time. But, of course, reasoned the honest child, even through her indignation, the woman perhaps needed the money, and it was right that she should be paid. Oh, the shame of being in a position like this, they who had always had plenty and to spare for others!

But there was no time to philosophize. This fire must be made. Even if she had to break up some of the furniture to make it, the room must be warm when Mother came home! And besides, she must hurry. No telling what Mrs. Barkus would do to her when she returned if she found out she was daring to enter the sacred precincts of the cellar and make a fire in her absence.

She held the candle high and looked around. There were some old newspapers piled in one corner, but they looked damp, for there was water on the floor of the cellar. No wonder such a musty smell came up the register!

There were a few old boxes and crates scattered untidily around, and a rusty ax lay on the floor. Dared she?

She put the candle carefully down on the floor and lifted the ax gingerly. She approached a box and brought the ax down on it with a crash and exulted in the splintering ruin that ensued. The box didn't look very substantial. It was perhaps an orange or peach crate, but the splinters would be just the thing to catch fire from that spunk of brightness just winking out. She laid down the ax and gathered a handful of splinters, stuck them carefully down into the fire, and was heartened to see them catch and blaze up. She applied a few more and had a neat little blaze going. It was interesting coaxing a fire into being, but how fast it ate up the fuel! She seized the ax and attacked a heavier box, finding it not so easy to break up.

While she worked, she wondered what Mrs. Barkus or her grouchy husband would say when they found their kindling wood all gone. Could they arrest her for a thing like that when she was cold? When--but, of course, their rent wasn't paid. Still, it was only a month behind. Well, she would get a job and pay for the kindling wood herself.

But her heart sank as she remembered how she had spent her whole morning until two o'clock trying to find a job and had stopped only because she had come to the end of the advertisements she had cut out of the paper that morning. It wasn't easy in these hard times for a girl to find a job, especially a girl who had never been trained for a job.

But she had never been trained for a fireman, that was certain, and she found it a backbreaking job before she finally got a good blaze, juggled with the strange dampers and doors, and got the coal to catch with a little licking blue flame that promised smartly to accomplish some real heat pretty soon. But at last she closed the cellar door on her efforts, extinguished her candle, and went upstairs just in time, for she heard the front door key rattling in the lock as she turned away from the cellar door, and she had to beat a hasty retreat to get inside her own room before the door opened.

It was not Mrs. Barkus as she had feared, but her own sister, Melissa, looking pale and tired and pretty, and carrying a dripping umbrella.

Phyllis had retreated to the kitchenette and was entrenched behind the table when Melissa entered, bearing the umbrella to the sink.

"Mercy!" said Melissa crossly. "What's the matter? What have you been doing? You've got a smudge all across your nose and cheeks, and you look as if you expected an army with banners."

"I did," laughed Phyllis with relief. "I thought you were Barkus the Belligerent, and I was about to defend myself with the iron spoon."

"But what have you been doing, Phyl, that you should have to defend yourself? She hasn't dared to come down on you for the rent, has she?"

"Not yet," said Phyllis solemnly, "but she may. When she finds out what I've been doing, she may turn us out of the house before night. Or worse than that perhaps. She may have us all arrested. Lissie, do they ever arrest people for making fires in other people's furnaces?" she asked with mock solemnity.

"Oh, Phyl, you haven't been making a fire! How did you dare? Does she know? A fire! How heavenly! I'm frozen to the bone. I didn't know it was so cold, or I'd have worn my old sweater under my coat, but I did want to make a good impression!"

Phyllis cast a quick anxious look into her sister's face and saw the sudden overshadowing of trouble as she spoke.

"Did you get the job, Lissa? You didn't! Oh, Lissa!"

"Of course not!" said Melissa crossly, stumbling over the rocker of Rosalie's small chair. "You didn't expect I would, did you? I told you not to expect anything. I thought you'd just go and do that thing, be disappointed! That's why I hated to go. It's almost worse than getting turned down to have to come home and tell it."

"Oh, Lissie, dear! I didn't mean to seem disappointed. I really am only disappointed for you because I saw you were counting on it so."

"I wasn't counting on it!" snapped Melissa. "I'm not fool enough to count on anything anymore. Somebody's got it in for us, that's what. I guess God wants to destroy us the way He did some of those old fiends in the Old Testament."

"Don't, Lissie! Don't talk that way. You know that's not true. That's not like you. You're a good little sport!"

"Sport nothing!" glowered Melissa. "I mean it. Somebody has. It couldn't be just happening, all this to come to one perfectly good, respectable family!"

Phyllis shuddered involuntarily at the hard tone her sister used.

"But don't, Lissie," she pleaded again, following her sister into the living room. "It only makes it worse to take it that way. Tell me about it. What was the matter? I didn't see how you could possibly fail with that wonderful letter from the provost, and Miss Waring the librarian being an old friend of Mother's."

"Oh, friends!" sneered Melissa, taking off her beret and shaking the drops from it into the sink. "Now look! I've got my only good hat wet, and all for nothing."

"But what was the matter, Liss, didn't you even see her? Didn't she read the letter?"

"Oh, yes, I saw her, after waiting hours. She was in some kind of conference. She read the letter of course, and smiled her sweetest, and said she was so sorry but they had about decided on an assistant librarian. And then she looked at me as if I were some kind of merchandise she was rejecting. 'And anyway, are you through college, my dear?' And when I told her no, I had had only one year, she shook her head and said, 'Well, that would settle it. We're giving the preference to college graduates now. You know almost every young girl goes to college nowadays.' As if I were staying away from college to play Parcheesi!"

Suddenly Melissa sank into the one big overstuffed chair that the room contained and, putting her head down on the worn old arm, broke into heartbreaking sobs that shook her slender shoulders.

Phyllis was on her knees beside her in a moment with an arm about her shaking shoulders.

"There, Lissie dear, don't cry. There's probably something a lot better for you. Don't feel so bad, dear."

"Well, I do feel bad," said Melissa, suddenly sitting up and pushing her hair up from her forehead wildly. "Here I am a great big girl and just as able as any college graduate to be assistant librarian, you know I am. You know, Father has trained us all about books, and I had that library course besides, and I can't get in! Not even with that wonderful letter from the provost. The old grump! I wouldn't have felt half so bad if she hadn't smiled so much! Just smiled and called me 'dear'! I wanted to smack her hypocritical old face. Do you know what's the matter? I heard it just after I got there. Another girl that had applied for the same job sat next to me and talked awhile. She said she had heard that Miss Waring wanted to keep the job for her young niece who is graduating from college this spring, and she has turned heaven and earth to get a pull with the trustees and get her in. And they say that even if one got the job now, it would last only till spring because she is determined to get that niece in."

Phyllis patted her sister's hand and looked troubled.

"Didn't she say anything at all about Mother, and us, and that she was sorry, or anything?"

"Oh, yes," snapped Melissa. "Said she was sorry all right, honey and almonds all over her lips when she said it. She was surprised that Professor Challenger was willing that his daughter should go to work before she had finished her college course. Said she should think he would have insisted upon that at any sacrifice. Said if it was a question of money, that money could always be borrowed. Said if there was anything at all she could do for my mother to be sure to let her know. Was Mother quite well? She had always been very fond of Mother! Pah! The old hypocrite!"

"The idea!" said Phyllis, getting to her feet indignantly. "Father! Poor Father! Didn't you tell her he was sick and didn't know that you had come back from college? Didn't you tell her Mother was having a terrible hard time and you needed that job even if it was only for two or three months? But, no, of course you didn't. You couldn't. I understand perfectly, Lissa. Now don't think another thing about it."

"But I can't help thinking," said Melissa with trembling lip. "It was going to be so wonderful earning all that money. We could have had all we wanted to eat every day, and, Phyl, I'm hungry right now. Is there anything in the house to eat?"

Phyllis turned her head quickly away and swallowed hard, trying to control the shake in her voice, trying to answer cheerfully. Though she was the younger of the two sisters, it had somehow always been her aim to keep Melissa happy. She could not bear to see Melissa's blue eyes clouded with tears or to know she was suffering in any way. She had adored Melissa since they were babies together.

"There's--just enough bread--for supper----I think--in case Mother doesn't get her money."

"Oh, but surely she'll get something, won't she?" asked Melissa, looking up with new anxiety in her eyes. "Didn't she say that Father had some government bonds put away that were only to be used in an absolute emergency? And didn't she say she was sure he would consider that they had to be used now. Surely she would be able to get money on them right away."

"I don't know," answered Phyllis doubtfully. "Perhaps it takes time to get government bonds cashed. Maybe she wouldn't be able to get the money until tomorrow. I thought we ought to save what there is for supper so everybody would get something, in case. . ." Her voice trailed off into anxious silence.

Her sister looked at her sharply, noted the blue shadows under the brown eyes, the pinched white look around the sweet lips.

"I'll bet you never ate any lunch yourself, Phyl. Come, own up. Did you?"

"Well, I didn't have time, really," evaded Phyllis. "You see, I had to make that fire. I was out all morning myself hunting a job, but everything had been taken before I got there, of course."

"And so you came home and washed the dishes and didn't eat a crumb. Why didn't you at least make yourself a cup of tea? There's quite a lot of tea, isn't there?"

"Well, not a lot, but, you see, the gas went out before I got the dishwater heated, and I didn't have a quarter to put in the meter."

"Mercy!" said Melissa, getting up from the chair and walking back and forth frantically like a caged lion. "Isn't this awful! To think of us all hungry, and not a cent to get anything with! I spent my last nickel going down to that library. I had to walk home. I think God is just awful to treat us this way! Yes, I do, Phyllis! You needn't look so horrified! We're hungry! We'll starve pretty soon if this keeps on! Oh! I'd give anything for a good thick juicy beefsteak!" And she ended with a choking sob of desperation.

"Oh, Melissa, don't!" wailed a small sweet voice from the doorway.

The two girls turned, and there stood Rosalie, their little sister, blue eyes troubled and fearful, gold curls dripping with rain, little cold fingers gripping her schoolbag, the water squashing out of the crack in her boots.

CHAPTER TWO

Both girls were filled with compunction at once, but it was Phyllis who sprang to her and took the heavy schoolbag from her.

"Why, you're wet, darling! Where is your umbrella? Your hair is simply dripping. And your clothes are wet through to the skin. Didn't you carry an umbrella this morning to school?"

"Yes, but somebody took it," said Rosalie, troubled. "I think it was that Sara Hauser. Some of the other girls have missed things. I'm so sorry. It was Mother's silk one. She made me take it this morning."

"Never mind, Rosy Posy," soothed Phyllis. "It isn't the worst thing in the world."

"No, I guess not!" murmured Melissa from the window where she had retreated and was looking out on the dirty street with unseeing eyes.

"Why does Lissa talk that way?" asked Rosalie, turning troubled eyes on Phyllis.

"Oh, she's just a little upset because someone else had the job at the library. But she'll get another pretty soon," explained Phyllis. "Take off your wet shoes, Rosy, quick! You'll get tonsillitis again."

"H'm! Another job! Fat chance!" grumbled Melissa.

Rosalie submitted to being dried off and wrapped in a blanket by the register, from which a good rush of heat was now issuing, but her eyes were still troubled as she watched her oldest sister driving a pin hard into the windowsill, her very back eloquent with desolation.

"Why does Lissa talk that way, Phyllie?" she asked again. "I heard her say she was hungry. Haven't we anything left to eat, sister?"

"Well, we've got a little left for supper. Are you hungry, too?"

"A little," owned the smaller sister. "I shared my apple with Anna Betts. She's the little girl from down on the flats. She didn't have any lunch at all today. Her father broke his leg yesterday, and they're awfully poor."

"You darling child!" It was Phyllis who said it, and there were tears in her voice.

"It's just awful!" burst forth Melissa.

But Rosalie suddenly broke forth into a joyous little squeal.

"Why, it's hot, Phyllie; the register's really hot! I didn't know it could get hot like that. It's only been kind of warm before."

"Yes," said Melissa, whirling around, "this room is warm for the first time this winter. You must have made a wonderful fire, Phyllis. Maybe the house is burning up."

"It is getting hot, isn't it?" said Phyllis. "Isn't it wonderful? Perhaps I ought to go down and shut something. It will all burn out."

"I guess you ought. Hurry, and I'll watch the street and see if Mrs. Barkus is coming and warn you. You don't want her to find you down cellar at her old furnace."

"No," gurgled Phyllis, "let her think she made her own fire and it has lasted. Let her see how nice it is to have the house warm for once, even though she did go out all day to save coal on us." Phyllis hurried down cellar and back again as fast as she could without meeting any menacing landladies.

"There!" she said triumphantly, closing the hall door. "I shut something down below and turned a little handle in the back of the pipe that opened something. I guess it's all right. Anyway it stopped roaring. And I put some more coal on, too, so she can't put the fire out tonight anymore unless she pours water on it. I guess I did everything I ought to have done."

"Well, it's good to get warm anyway," said Melissa, who had come over to the register and was warming her feet.

"Yes," said Rosalie smiling. "It's nice, isn't it?"

"Now," said Melissa after she had basked in the comfortable heat for a moment, "our next need is food. What are we going to do about it? Shall we make a raid on the Barkus larder and really be put in jail, or would it be better to starve to death?"

Rosalie giggled, but it was easy to see that her laughter was near to tears.

"Seriously, Phyllis, what is there in the house? Mother will be hungry, too, when she comes. We ought to have whatever there is ready, oughtn't we?"

Melissa had a way on occasion of rising to a situation that she had been leaving to her younger sister as if she had been working hard and Phyllis doing nothing, but Phyllis was too genuinely troubled by the facts of the case to mind just now.

"Liss, there isn't a thing but the large half of a loaf of bread! Honestly! Oh, and a little tea. There isn't even hot water unless I go down and boil it on that furnace."

"Mother will have a quarter for the gas meter when she comes, won't she?" said Melissa thoughtfully.

"Maybe. But she hadn't but a dollar and five cents in her purse when she went away. If she couldn't get the money cashed today, she might have had to spend that for something for Father."

There was a silence in the room for a moment, and then Rosalie looked up with a sacrificial expression.

"I've got a quarter. It's the one that Mother gave me when I won that contest in school. I was saving it to get her a birthday present. But I guess perhaps she'd rather have tea ready when she gets home."

"I'm afraid she would, Rosy Posy," said Phyllis, stooping to kiss the sunny hair and hide her own tendency to tears. "Suppose you lend it to us on interest, a cent a month, how's that? I promise to pay as soon as my ship comes in."

"Oh, Phyl, how funny!" said Rosalie. "I don't want any interest." And she pattered over to the bureau drawer where she kept all her small belongings and rooted out the quarter from underneath her most precious things.

"It seems wicked to use it," said Phyllis as she held the quarter in her hand as if it were a jewel.

"Don't feel that way, sister," said the little girl. "I'm so glad I have it just now when we need it. Put it in quick, and I'll get the table set. Can't we have soaked bread? I love that. Lots of butter and salt and pepper and parsley and an onion, mmmmm-m, it's good."

"But we have hardly a scratch of butter," said Phyllis sadly, "just salt and a little pepper."

"Isn't there even an onion?" asked Rosalie. "I love onion in it."

"Not even an onion, nor so much as a sprig of parsley," said Phyllis. "I wonder where Bob is. He might have raised a penny or two, and we could send him for an onion."

"Why, yes, he is late, isn't he? Perhaps he hasn't got done his paper route yet. But he doesn't get his pay for that till tomorrow."

"Well, we'll have to do the best we can. Lissa, you cut the bread up and put it in the yellow bowl. Rosalie, you get your shoes and stockings on and set the table quick. Mother is liable to be here any minute, and we want it to look cheerful. Put the little geranium pot in the center; there are three buds on it almost open. It will look real festive. We'll pretend we're going to have a banquet. We ought to be very thankful that you had that quarter so we could get that gas going! It's uncanny to be without hot water."

"There's a little sugar for Mother's tea," said Rosalie, lifting the lid of the fine old china sugar bowl.

"Isn't that great!" said Phyllis with forced cheeriness. "Things aren't anywhere near as bad as they might be."

Melissa finished cutting up the hard bread with a sniff and went into the other room in the dark to stand by the window and glower.

"Oh, come on back, Lissa, and let's sing something. Things won't seem half so bad if we sing, and besides, Mother'll like to hear it when she comes in," called Phyllis.

"I can't sing!" snapped back Melissa. "I tell you, I'm hungry, and I don't think it's fair, so there!" And she flung herself down on the old davenport that was Bob's bed at night, and they could hear a choked sob.

Rosalie was laying the knives and forks carefully on the table, and her face was very serious. At last she said in a whisper to Phyllis: "Phyllie, do you think it would be all right to pray for just an onion?"

Phyllis felt her own tears near the surface again, but she tried to keep her voice steady and cheerful as she answered: "Why, I can't see that it would do any harm, dear. Unless--"

"Unless what?" asked the little girl anxiously.

"Why, unless you'd get your hopes all up, and then if it didn't come you'd be so disappointed."

"No, I won't," said the little girl. "I thought about that, but, you see, if it didn't come I'd just think God had some other way He wanted to do. He mightn't think it best for us to have an onion now."

Phyllis looked at the earnest little face wonderingly. What a sweet simplicity there was in a child's faith. She sighed, for in her own heart there was stealing a fierce resentment against something, someone, that all her dear ones should have to suffer so. She could not quite put it into words as Melissa had done and blame God, but it did seem that God, if there really was a God, had forgotten the Challengers.

Rosalie had slipped away into the big clothes closet and closed the door.

Phyllis salted and peppered her dry bread cubes, laid on top of them a little wisp of butter that had been left over from the morning meal, carefully hoarded, then lifted the steaming kettle of water and poured it over the bread till she was sure she had just the right amount, covering it tightly with the biggest plate to let it steam until Mother came. The sight and smell of even that steaming, unbuttered bread made her sick with faintness, and she turned away, blinking back the tears.

The tea was ready in the tea ball, the gas turned to the minimum under the kettle, the cups ready. Everything was done. If there were only cream for the tea and butter for the bread, plenty of butter, and an onion! How many things it took to make just plain, simple, palatable food, and how much money it took for them all! Yes, life was very horrid!

She wandered into the other room and dropped down beside Melissa on the couch, her hand on the pretty head among the pillows.

"Don't get down and out, Lissa; it makes it so hard for the rest of us!" she pleaded.

"I won't!" said Melissa meekly, sitting up and brushing down her tumbled hair. "You're a darling. You never get down and out, do you? I don't know what we would do without you. 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. It's all dark over on her side of the hall. There! There's someone turning the front door key now. Perhaps she has come!" said Phyllis in sudden alarm, and they all stood breathlessly still and listened. Then the front door shut with a bang that only a boy could give it, and an eager breathless boy at that.

"It's only Bob!" said Rosalie. "Oh, I'm glad he's come!" And she rushed to open the door for him.

"Oh boy!" said Bob, rushing in and thumping down a big basket on the floor. "Whaddaya think I got? Guess!"

Rosalie stood with her hands clasped under her chin, her eyes fixed upon her brother's face and a look of breathless radiance.

But Bob could not wait for them to guess.

"A beefsteak!" he shouted. "A real beefsteak, thick as yer foot and big as they make 'em. It's all red and juicy. Oh boy! Lead me to it. All I had t'day is one banana! Who's goin' ta cook this spread?"

"A beefsteak!" breathed Rosalie with starry eyes.

Phyllis received the precious brown paper bundle, soft and damp, and looked down at the basket, which was still fairly full.

"What else is there, Bob?" asked Melissa, stooping down. "Where did you get them all? These things must have cost a lot of money. You didn't go and charge anything, did you?"

"Naw, I didn't charge anything, Funny-face! Where'dya think I'd find anybody ta charge things to, I'd like ta know? I earned 'em, all righty. That's why I'm sa late. I dunno what all's there. I told him ta put in a lotta things, p'tates and t'mates, and cheese and crackers. I guess there's onions there, too, an' parsley--"

"Onions!" exclaimed Rosalie, her face aflame with joy. "Oh, onions, Phyllis!" "But how did you get them, Bob?" asked Phyllis, "You couldn't have sold enough papers to buy all those things."

"Sold enough ta get a pound o' butter," said Bob indignantly. "Had Tom's route and mine both tanight. And then when I went ta Brady's ta buy a pound a butter, he asked me could I do him a favor. He'd just had a phone call from a good customer of his wanting an order sent away out in the country and his boy was gone, and he couldn't leave the shop, so I said course I'd go. I hadta take a trolley and change twice, and, gee, I thought I'd never get back! He didn't say what he'd pay me. I thought it might be a quarter, but boy! When I got back, didn't he have this basket all fixed up for me to take home, and a whole dollar besides, and he said he'd never forget it, because it was late and this was an awful good customer, and he wanted ta please her, because she buys a lot and she was awful anxious ta get the things there tanight."

"There's a glass of jelly, and some olives," announced Melissa, who had been rooting in the basket.

Then suddenly, as they all stood gazing at the wonderful basket, the mother dropped down into a little heap by the fireplace, and in dismay they turned their attention to her.