Elnora kissed her mother over and over, and hurried upstairs.  She identified her room by the dressing-case.  There were a pretty rug, and curtains, white iron bed, plain and rocking chairs to match her case, a shirtwaist chest, and the big closet was filled with her old clothing and several new dresses.  She found the bathroom, bathed, dressed in fresh linen and went down to a supper that was an evidence of Mrs. Comstock’s highest art in cooking.  Elnora was so hungry she ate her first real meal in two weeks.  But the bites went down slowly because she forgot about them in watching her mother.

“How on earth did you do it?” she asked at last.  “I always thought you were naturally brown as a nut.”

“Oh, that was tan and sunburn!” explained Mrs. Comstock.  “I always knew I was white underneath it.  I hated to shade my face because I hadn’t anything but a sunbonnet, and I couldn’t stand for it to touch my ears, so I went bareheaded and took all the colour I accumulated.  But when I began to think of moving you in to your work, I saw I must put up an appearance that wouldn’t disgrace you, so I thought I’d best remove the crust.  It took some time, and I hope I may die before I ever endure the feel and the smell of the stuff I used again, but it skinned me nicely.  What you now see is my own with a little dust of rice powder, for protection.  I’m sort of tender yet.”

“And your lovely, lovely hair?” breathed Elnora.

“Hairdresser did that!” said Mrs. Comstock.  “It cost like smoke.  But I watched her, and with a little help from you I can wash it alone next time, though it will be hard work.  I let her monkey with it until she said she had found ‘my style.’  Then I tore it down and had her show me how to build it up again three times.  I thought my arms would drop.  When I paid the bill for her work, the time I’d taken, the pins, and combs she’d used, I nearly had heart failure, but I didn’t turn a hair before her.  I just smiled at her sweetly and said, ‘How reasonable you are!’ Come to think of it, she was!  She might have charged me ten dollars for what she did quite as well as nine seventy-five.  I couldn’t have helped myself.  I had made no bargain to begin on.”

Then Elnora leaned back in her chair and shouted, in a gust of hearty laughter, so a little of the ache ceased in her breast.  There was no time to think, the remainder of that evening, she was so tired she had to sleep, while her mother did not awaken her until she barely had time to dress, breakfast and reach school.  There was nothing in the new life to remind her of the old.  It seemed as if there never came a minute for retrospection, but her mother appeared on the scene with more work, or some entertaining thing to do.

Mrs. Comstock invited Elnora’s friends to visit her, and proved herself a bright and interesting hostess.  She digested a subject before she spoke; and when she advanced a view, her point was sure to be original and tersely expressed.  Before three months people waited to hear what she had to say.  She kept her appearance so in mind that she made a handsome and a distinguished figure.