She pitied them openly for the grief and care she had brought upon them,
and in the next breath congratulated them and herself that at least they
had all that money could do to smooth the difficult way. In the face of
this, it naturally did not grow any easier for the girls to tell the
truth--and they kept silent.
For six years Mrs. Whitmore did not step; then her limbs and back grew
stronger, and she began to sit up, and to stand for a moment on her
feet. Her daughters now bought the strip of Axminster carpet and laid a
path across the bedroom, and another one from the bedroom door to the
great chair in the sitting-room, so that her feet might not note the
straw matting on the floor and question its being there.
In her own sitting-room at home--which had opened, like this, out of her
bedroom--the rugs were soft and the chairs sumptuous with springs and
satin damask. One such chair had been saved from the wreck--the one at
the end of the strip of carpet.
Day by day and month by month the years passed. The frail little woman
walked the Axminster path and sat in the tufted chair. For her there
were a china cup and plate, and a cook and maids below to serve. For her
the endless sewing over which Katherine and Margaret bent their backs to
eke out their scanty income was a picture or a bit of embriodery,
designed to while away the time.
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