LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER I

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      The house was low and white and rambling with lemon-colored blinds and a moss-green roof. There were frills of daffodils all down the garden walks and around the edges of the white picket fence and a mist of golden forsythia in a semicircle at the back.

      But the story began way back the summer before.

      Rilla was just out of high school and planning to go to college the following fall. Thurl had been in college two years. Mr. and Mrs. Reed felt it would be good for Marilla to have one year at home with her mother before she went away to school, she was still so young. The Reeds had old-fashioned ideas and loved to have their children around them. Thurlow came home every weekend. His college was only a matter of fifty miles away and he could make it on his bicycle in a short time.

      The Reeds were comfortably situated. They owned their own home and had saved a tidy little sum every year. They had begun when their babies were in their cradles to save up for their education. They were trying to take life as easily as they could, not rushing into great expense, but looking ahead and providing for the necessities that were likely to come.

      The summer was hot and Father Reed had not been up to his usual robust strength. He came home from the office earlier than usual some days and complained of headaches. It seemed a strange thing for Father not to be in the best of health, for the family to have to keep quiet on his account and consider how to save his strength. He had always been the cheerful, strong, breezy head of the family.

      Then one day he was brought home unconscious. He roused only to give them a farewell smile and was gone.

      They were dazed at first. They couldn’t believe it was true that Father was gone. It didn’t seem possible to go on without him.

      Thurlow suggested that perhaps he ought to give up college and find a job, but his mother said no, the money was in the bank for that purpose and his father would not like him to change his plans. He and his sister must have their education. The mother was strong and sweet about it, though she looked so frail and appealing when she said it that it sent a pang through both the children’s hearts. They resolved to get through their education as swiftly and thoroughly as was possible and get ready to take care of Mother. Of course there was money enough saved up to keep her in comfort while they were studying. Then they would both get good positions and keep Mother just as she had always been kept, in simple, pleasant comfort in her own quiet home.

      But again the unexpected stepped in.

      Early in the fall, the bank where the savings had been confidently put in trust closed its doors. Things were said to be in bad shape. One of the officials was missing, as also were stocks and bonds and much money. It was appalling. Another official committed suicide, and a cloud of gloom spread over the town. Overnight the whole situation changed for the Reeds. The taxes were coming due, and the money in the bank on which they had confidently relied to pay them with was not. Following hard on the heels of that was the discovery that Mr. Reed, a few months before his death, had mortgaged his house in order to get some money to loan to a fellow workman in the office to save the roof being sold from over his head. It appeared that this had been done through a building and loan association that had now gone into the hands of a receiver, and that the mortgage included a personal note Mr. Reed had signed, binding him to pay double the amount of the mortgage in default of payment at the stated times. The mortgage itself had not been unreasonably large, not to the full value of the house, but when it was doubled it became an amount of alarming proportions.

      With Mr. Reed’s good salary and his comfortable savings account, there had seemed no risk in this, but with the bank closed indefinitely and nothing to pay the fall installment with, things looked pretty bleak for the Reeds. They knew nothing of business, any of them. Mr. Reed had protected them from care and worry. But when they had concluded their interview with the wily lawyer in charge of the building and loan affairs, they were wiser, and sadder, too. Thurlow Reed stood by the window, staring out at a world that had suddenly gone blank and implacable, appalled at what lay before him, seeing no way around it.

      It was very still in the big, old-fashioned parlor after the lawyer had gone. Rilla sat staring at her brother’s back and trying to visualize the future, aghast at the cloud of trouble that seemed to have settled over them.

      The mother sat there quietly with her hands in her lap and slow tears stealing down her soft cheeks. Then suddenly she spoke, as if she were thinking aloud.

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