To one who watched him go, he had almost a triumphant
air, but it was not triumph, only the brave beginning of a hard fight
and a long one.
Then came Mrs. Bell, returned from a shopping trip, and sank down in a
wicker rocker, glad of the shade and a cup of tea. No, she didn't want
it iced. "Hot tea makes you cooler," was her theory.
"You don't look very tired," said the girl. "Seems to me you get
stronger all the time."
"I do," said her mother. "You don't realize, you can't realize,
Diantha, what this means to me. Of course to you I am an old woman, a
back number--one has to feel so about one's mother. I did when I
married, and my mother then was five years younger than I am now."
"I don't think you old, mother, not a bit of it. You ought to have
twenty or thirty years of life before you, real life."
"That's just what I'm feeling," said Mrs. Bell, "as if I'd just begun to
live! This is so _different!_ There is a big, moving thing to work
for. There is--why Diantha, you wouldn't believe what a comfort it is
to me to feel that my work here is--really--adding to the profits!"
Diantha laughed aloud.
"You dear old darling," she said, "I should think it was! It is
_making_ the profits."
"And it grows so," her mother went on. "Here's this part so well
assured that you're setting up the new Union House! Are you _sure_
about Mrs.
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