"Fight your own battles, my dear," said Mrs. Brewster. "If you are not able to compel politeness from your brother and others I feel sure that it is your own fault, and there is no use in someone else demanding it for you. Besides," said Mrs. Brewster, yawning rather openly, "I am tired fussing over you children. I have about decided to go into business."
"Mummy!" cried Frank in a horrified tone.
"_Mam_-ma!" wailed Mabel.
"Exactly! I am thinking of going into interior decorating now that you children are old enough to look out for yourselves. I have spent a good share of my life looking after you, and now I think I will do something that I have always wanted to do."
There was a long silence. Coming on the heels of her own plan, Mabel listened in amazement. Frank, however, went to his mother and sat down on the arm of her chair. There was a break in his boyish voice when he spoke.
"Mummy, I don't like it," he said. "Are we out of money, or anything like that?"
"Oh, no, not at all!" said Mrs. Brewster easily. "I just thought it would be fun."
"I don't like it," repeated Frank in a hurt tone and, kissing his mother, he left the room and went whistling upstairs. Mrs. Brewster chuckled.
"Frank always whistles when he is cross," she said, looking at her daughter as though she would appreciate the joke. But Mabel did not smile.
"I don't blame him at all," she said stiffly.
"Dear me! What a tempest in a tea-pot!" said Mrs. Brewster. "Here are a lot of stockings belonging to you that need mending. I am going upstairs to read," and she too left the room, calling back, "Be sure to put out the lights."
Mabel, quite stupefied with surprise, sat thinking awhile, then she snapped off the lights, thinking as she did so that it was her mother's usual custom to put the room in order before she left it for the night.
But Mabel did not intend to do it. So she left the chairs standing every which way with papers and magazines scattered over the table and her mother's sewing trailing on the floor.
Reaching her own pretty room, she put on a comfortable kimono, arranged the light so she could read in bed, and from under a box divan dug out a paper-covered novel. She read the title with satisfaction, _Lady Ermintrude's Lover_, or _The Phantom of Marston's Marsh_. She curled up against the pillows, laying a copy of _Longfellow's Complete Poems_ close beside her as a quick, safe substitute in case of interruption.
Then before opening her book, she gave herself up to her thoughts, planning a luxurious and detailed campaign of self-indulgence. She smiled as she thought of the little Captain. It was a good joke on her, because Mabel was shrewd enough to realize that Mrs. Horton was trying to show her that happiness, true happiness, lay in doing for others.
Mabel, with the Captain's authority behind her, prepared to fulfill all her dreams. How this was going to strike her mother Mabel could not guess, but her mother was showing a strange, new and unforeseen side.
She was glad, and hoped her mother would be so busy with her own plans that she would fail to notice her daughter's actions. Presently Mabel buried herself in the trashy novel and with many thrills over the foolish and impossible adventures of the Lady Ermintrude forgot everything but her book.
While she was thus employed, Mrs. Brewster, sitting on the foot of her son's bed, her feet curled under her, was deep in a whispered conversation which made both of them giggle like a pair of mischievous children rather than mother and son.
"All right, mummy," agreed Frank finally. "I am game, but I know Mabe will be awfully mad at me."
"Just go ahead and do as I tell you," said Mrs. Brewster, planting a kiss on her son's rumpled hair. "It will all come out right and I will help you when things get too deep."
She went off to bed, and Frank, grinning with pleased anticipation, was almost asleep before the door closed.
In the morning force of habit woke Mabel, and remembering the breakfast table to be set, she hopped out of bed and started for her morning bath.
Then she quickly hopped again, this time back into bed.
Presently her mother looked in.
"Time to get up, Mabel dear," she said cheerily. "You will be late."
"I don't believe I want to get up this morning," answered Mabel uncertainly, and waited for her mother to retort, "Oh, yes, you do! Come and help with the breakfast!" but instead she said:
"All right, my dear; suit yourself," and went off to call Frank.
Somehow Mabel did not care to sleep after that, and lay listening to the sounds and smells from below. She did not guess that the lower doors had been purposely left open in order to let the odors from her favorite dishes ascend. But on the rare occasions when her mother had let her sleep over, there had always been a dainty meal left in the warming oven, so Mabel snuggled down and fixed her already strained and tired eyes on the poor print in _Lady Ermintrude_.
Her mother and Frank went off to church without disturbing her, and as the front door closed with the click that told her that the latch was down, Mabel closed her book, hurried out of bed, and wrapping her kimono around her, went downstairs to explore.
She found nothing!
The warming oven was empty; the tables in the kitchen and dining-room were so empty that they looked lonesome. She looked in the ice-chest.
There was nothing cooked. In the sink there was a pan of potatoes peeled and in cold water; on top of the warming oven a pan of bread pudding, looking very queer and doughy, was ready for baking. There were some chops. Nothing more.
Mabel commenced to feel abused. She went back to her room, and once more followed along on the trail of Lady Ermintrude. After a long while the telephone rang. Mabel went down and heard her mother's voice.
"We decided to have a little spree, dear," she said. "We are going to take dinner down town at Sherr's. Hop on the car and join us; we will wait for you."
"Where are you now?" asked Mabel joyfully. She loved an occasional meal at the bright pleasant restaurant where everything was always so deliciously cooked and carefully served.
"Here at Sherr's, and you must hurry; it is past one o'clock now."
"Why, I am not even dressed yet," wailed Mabel.
"Oh, I am sorry," said Mrs. Brewster. "I don't believe we had better wait. You know it always takes you an hour to dress. Better luck next time, dearie! There are chops in the ice-box, and the potatoes and pudding are ready to cook, and there are some canned peas. You can fix a good dinner, and we will be home before long. Perhaps if you have time you had better pick up the sitting-room. I didn't feel in the mood for it this morning. It is an awful mess. Don't bother if you don't want to, however. Good-bye!"
Mabel hung up the receiver with an angry frown. Nothing was going right; nothing was starting as she had intended it. She dressed slowly, and ate bread and butter and sugar for dinner. The milkman had forgotten to leave the milk. She drank water. And she did _not_ pick up the sitting-room.
Later, her mother and brother failing to appear, she went out for a walk. When she returned at half past five, she met her truant family descending from a big touring car. Some friends had picked them up and had taken them for a long ride.
Mrs. Brewster noted the bread crumbs on the kitchen table and the open sugar bowl. She smiled. Later they all sat down to a delicious hot supper, and Mabel cheered up enough to listen politely at least to the accounts of their dinner and ride that had followed.
But when according to her orders, Mabel went to writing the account of the day in her notebook, it did not sound interesting at all!
The next afternoon when Mabel came from school, having been detained half an hour on account of inattention, she found Frank busy mending the tears in his basketball suit by the simple method of drawing them up in a tight pucker.
"Where is mother?" demanded Mabel.
"Dunno," said Frank, squinting at his work.
"Well, I wonder where she is," said Mabel. "Rosanna Horton asked me to come over to supper tonight, and I want to wear that new dress mother is making for me. She said she would have it done today." She went into her mother's little sewing-room, and came back looking disappointed.
"It isn't finished at all!" she said. "I don't see where mother can be!"
"Fix it yourself," suggested Frank, stabbing his needle into the jersey.
"I can't," said Mabel. "Mother always does it. Besides," she added as an afterthought, "I hate sewing."
As she spoke, her mother came in with a cheery greeting for her children. Before Mabel had a chance to ask her mother about the dress, Mrs. Brewster said,
"Mabel, I want you to get supper for Frank tonight, and be here when the laundress comes for her pay. I have been asked to take dinner with a woman from New York City who is an interior decorator of note."
"I can't, mamma, Rosanna Horton has asked me over there, and I told her I would come," said Mabel peevishly.
"Well, tell her you won't be among those present," said Frank, chewing off his thread.