Re-Creations Read Online Free

haven’t done a thing to the parlor yet,” said the father sadly, throwing open a door at his right as Cornelia followed him. “Your mother hadn’t the strength!” He sighed deeply. “But then,” he added more cheerfully, “what are parlors when we all are alive and getting well?”
    Cornelia cast a wondering look at him. She had not known her father thought so much of her mother. There was a half-glorified look on his face that made her think of a boy in love. It was strange to think it, but of course her mother and father had been young lovers once. Cornelia, her thoughts temporarily turned from her own brooding, followed into the desolate dining room, and her heart sank. This was home! This was what she had come back to after all her dreams of a career and all her pride over an artistic nature!
    There was a place set for her at one end of the red-clothed table and a plaintive little supper drying up on the stove in the kitchen, but Cornelia was not hungry. She made pretence of nibbling at the single little burned lamb chop and a heavy soda biscuit. If she had known how the children had gone without meat to buy that lamb chop, and how hard Louise had worked to make these biscuits and the applesauce that accompanied them, she might have been more appreciative; but as it was she was feeling very miserable indeed and had no time from her own self-pitying thoughts to notice them at all.
    The dining room was a dreary place. An old sofa that had done noble duty in the family when Cornelia was a baby lounged comfortably at one side, a catchall for overcoats, caps, newspapers, bundles, mending, anything that happened along. Three of the dining room chairs were more or less gone or emaciated in their seats. The cat was curled up comfortably in the old wooden rocker that had always gone by the name of “Father’s rocker “and wore an ancient patchwork cushion. The floor was partly covered by a soiled and worn Axminster rug whose roses blushed redly still behind wood-colored scrolls on an indiscriminate background that no one would ever suspect of having been pearl-gray once upon a time. The wallpaper was an ugly, dirty dark red, with tarnished gold designs, torn in places and hanging down, greasy and marred where chairs had rubbed against it and heads had apparently leaned. It certainly was not a charming interior. She curled her lip slightly as she took it all in. This was her home! And she a born artist and interior decorator!
    Her silence and lack of enthusiasm dampened the spirits of the children, who had looked to her coming to brighten the dreary aspect of things. They began to sit around silently and watch her, their sharp young eyes presently searching out her thoughts, following her gaze from wallpaper to curtainless window, from broken chair to sagging couch.
    “We haven’t been able to get very much in order,” sighed Louise in a suddenly grown-up, responsible tone, wrinkling her pink young brow into lines of care. “I wanted to put up some curtains before you got here, but I couldn’t find them. Father wouldn’t let me open the boxes till Carey came home to help. He said there was enough around for me to tend to, all alone, now.”
    “Of course,” assented the elder sister briefly and not at all sympathetically. In her heart she was thinking that curtains wouldn’t make any difference. What was the use of trying to do anything, anyway? Suppose the beautiful stranger who had been so sure she would make her home lovely could see her now. What would she think? She drew a deep sigh.
    “I guess maybe I better go to bed,” said Louise suddenly, blinking to hide a tendency to tears. It was somehow all so different from what she had expected. She had thought it would be almost like having mother back, and it wasn’t at all. Cornelia seemed strange and difficult.
    “Yes,” said the father, coming up from the cellar, where he had been putting the erratic furnace to bed for the night. “You and Harry better