`` No more boarding out for me , Ernest . You may consider me as a family man henceforth . '' Frances and Alma talked it all over before they went to sleep that night . `` Just think , '' said Frances , `` if we had n't asked her here today she might never have found her brother ! It 's all Mother 's doing , bless her ! Things do happen like a storybook sometimes , do n't they , Al ? A Correspondence and A Climax At sunset Sidney hurried to her room to take off the soiled and faded cotton dress she had worn while milking . She had milked eight cows and pumped water for the milk-cans afterward in the fag-end of a hot summer day . She did that every night , but tonight she had hurried more than usual because she wanted to get her letter written before the early farm bedtime . She had been thinking it out while she milked the cows in the stuffy little pen behind the barn . This monthly letter was the only pleasure and stimulant in her life . Existence would have been , so Sidney thought , a dreary , unbearable blank without it . She cast aside her milking-dress with a thrill of distaste that tingled to her rosy fingertips . As she slipped into her blue-print afternoon dress her aunt called to her from below . Sidney ran out to the dark little entry and leaned over the stair railing . Below in the kitchen there was a hubbub of laughing , crying , quarrelling children , and a reek of bad tobacco smoke drifted up to the girl 's disgusted nostrils . Aunt Jane was standing at the foot of the stairs with a lamp in one hand and a year-old baby clinging to the other . She was a big shapeless woman with a round good-natured face -- cheerful and vulgar as a sunflower was Aunt Jane at all times and occasions . `` I want to run over and see how Mrs. Brixby is this evening , Siddy , and you must take care of the baby till I get back . '' Sidney sighed and went downstairs for the baby .
It never would have occurred to her XXXXX protest or be petulant about it .
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