confine her
attentions more and more to mere financial assistance. She presently
arranged for the best of medical care for her mother, even for a
hospital stay, but her attitude grew more and more that of the
noncommittal outsider, who helps without argument and disapproves
without comment. Evelyn had made a great success of her dressmaking, but
such aid as she could give must be given her sister, for Marguerite's
early and ill-considered marriage had come to the usual point when, with
an unreliable husband, constantly arriving and badly managed babies, and
bitter poverty and want, she found herself much in the position of her
mother, twenty years before. May was still living in Oakland, widowed.
Her two sons were at home and working, and with a small income from
rented rooms as well, the three and her youngest daughter, Regina,
somehow managed to maintain the dreary cottage in which most of the
children were born.

"They all give me a great big pain!" Evelyn said one day frankly, when
Julia was at Madame Carroll's for a fitting, and the cousins--one
standing in her French hat and exquisite underlinen, and the other
kneeling, her gown severely black, big scissors in hand, and a
pincushion dangling at her breast--were discussing the family. "Gran'ma
isn't so bad, because she's old, but Aunt Emeline and Mama have a right
to get next to themselves! Mama had a fit because I wouldn't take a flat
over here, and have her and Regina with me; well, I could do it
perfectly well; it isn't the money!" Evelyn stood up, took seven pins
separately and rapidly from her mouth, and inserted them in the flimsy
lining that dangled about Julia's arm. "You want this tight, but not too
tight, don't you, Julie?" said she. "That can come in a little, still.
No," she resumed aggrievedly, "but I board at a nice place on Fulton
street; the Lancasters, the people that keep it, are just lovely. Mrs.
Lancaster is so motherly and the girls are so jolly; my wash costs me a
dollar a week; I belong to the library; I've got a lovely room; I go to
the theatre when I want to; I buy the clothes I like, and why should I
worry? I know the way Mama keeps house, and I've had enough of it!"

"It's awfully hard," Julia mused, "Marguerite's just doing the same
thing over again. It's just discouraging!"

"Well, you got out of it, and I got out of it," Evelyn said briskly,
"and they call it our luck! Luck? There ain't any such thing," she went
on indignantly. "I'm