When Betsy and George had gone to bed, Roger put down his paper.
"Look here, Edith," he proposed, "how'd you like me to read aloud while you
sew?" She looked up with a smile of pleased surprise.
"Why, father dear, I'd love it." At once, she bent over her needle again,
so that if there were any awkwardness attending this small change in their
lives it did not reveal itself in her pretty countenance. "What shall we
read?" she affably asked.
"I've got a capital book," he replied. "It's about travel in Japan."
"I'd like nothing better," Edith replied. And with a slight glow of pride
in himself Roger took his book in hand. The experiment was a decided
success. He read again the next night and the next, while Edith sat at her
sewing. And so this hour's companionship, from nine to ten in the evening,
became a regular custom--just one hour and no more, which Roger spent with
his daughter, intimately and pleasantly. Yes, life was certainly smoothing
out.
Edith's three older children had been reinstated in school. And although at
first, when deprived of their aid, she had found it nearly impossible to
keep her two small boys amused and give them besides the four hours a day
of fresh air they required, she had soon met this trouble by the same
simple process as before. Of her few possessions still unsold, she had
disposed of nearly all, and with a small fund thus secured she had sent for
Hannah to return.
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