Anna had gone upstairs, and Regina was finishing her breakfast when Chester came downstairs, followed by the still sleepy yet shining-eyed Geraldine.  Geraldine was to be married in a few weeks now, and had given up her position in an office, to devote all her time to house-furnishing and sewing.

“I’m awfully sorry to be so late,” smiled Geraldine, “but we talked until I don’t know when last night!” She poured herself a cup of coffee; the meal went cheerfully on.  Presently the bedroom door opened, and a stout, handsome, middle-aged woman came into the kitchen.

Julia was used, by now, to the transformation that had come to house and garden, that had affected every member of her mother’s family in the past four years.  But to the change in her aunt, Mrs. Torney, she never became quite accustomed.  It had been slow in coming; it had come all at once.  There had been weeks when Julia felt that nothing would ever silence the whining voice, or make useful the idle hands.  There had been a wretched time when the young woman had warned the older that matters could not continue as they were.  There had been agitated decisions on Mrs. Torney’s part to go away, with Regina, to starve and struggle again; there had been a scene when Regina coolly refused to leave the new comforts of Julia’s rule.

And then, suddenly, there was a new woman in the family, in Aunt May’s place.  Julia always dated the change from a certain Thanksgiving Day, when Mrs. Torney, who was an excellent cook, had prepared a really fine dinner.  Julia and the girls put the dining-room in order, a wood fire roared in the air-tight stove, another in the sitting-room grate.  Julia dressed prettily; she put a late rose in her mother’s hair, draped the invalid’s prettiest shawl about the thin shoulders, arrayed the toddling baby in her daintiest finery.  She coaxed her aunt to go upstairs to make herself fresh and neat just before dinner, and during the whole evening Mrs. Torney’s sons and daughters, Julia and Evelyn, Chester and Mrs. Page and little old Mrs. Cox united to praise the dinner and the cook.

It was as if poor Aunt May had come into her own, had been given at last the role to which she had always been suited.  Handsome in her fresh shirt waist and black skirt, with her gray hair coiled above a shining face, she beamed over turkey dressing and cranberry sauce; she laughed until she cried, when Elmer, who had come from Oakland for the feast, solemnly prefaced a request for more mince pie with a reckless:  “Come on, Lloyd, let’s die together; it’s worth it!”

From that day hers was the happy part of the bustling housewife.  No New England matron ever took more pride in cup cakes or apple pies, no kitchen in the world gave forth more savoury odours of roast meats and new-baked bread.  Mrs. Torney’s heavy tread on the kitchen floor was usually the first thing Julia heard in the morning, and late at night the infatuated housekeeper would slip out to the warm, clean, fragrant place for a last peep at rising dough or simmering soup.  Aunt May read the magazines now only to seek out new combinations of meats and vegetables.  Julia would smile, to glance across the dining-room to her aunt’s chair beneath the lamp, and see the big, kindly face pucker over some startling discovery.