Job's Niece

Grace Livingston Hill

Description

When Doris Dunbar's loving father dies, her family is torn apart. Suddenly Doris is faced with financial ruin, a hateful stepmother, a disgruntled fiancé, a dying brother, and the care of younger siblings. Just as Doris's world is crumbling around her, she meets Scottish businessman Angus Macdonald. Will his unusual business proposition lead her closer to the peace and answers that have eluded her?

Sujets

• Fiction
• Romance
• Christian

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Treasure Editions
• Date de parution: 06 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781774643198
• Langue: English

Extrait

Job's Niece
by Grace Livingston Hill

First published in 1927
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.










































JOB'S NIECE



by

Grace Livingston Hill

Chapter 1

1920s, Eastern United States

A t half past midnight Doris Dunbar was still sitting at the desk in the library, her head bent over a paper on which were many columns of figures. She was surrounded by piles of bills in orderly rows, covering not only the top of the big old desk, but also several neighboring chairs; a regular blizzard of bills, long overdue, some of them many times duplicated, with little impertinent footnotes of reminders. The lamplight fell on the slender figure, touching to bronze the hair that was folded in wide burnished bands around the symmetrical young head. That was the first thing that one noticed about Doris, her glorious uncut hair, which, nevertheless, did not give her an air of being out-of-date. When she lifted her head to reach a fat pile of bills from one of the large department stores, the light glanced sharply on the white oval of her cheek and brought out the blue shadows under her tired eyes, giving to her face a look of delicacy that was almost startling.

Doris found the amount of another bill and set it down in round clear figures below her last column, catching her breath and drawing her delicate brows with a troubled frown as she sent the forceful pencil through its calculations and set down the appalling result. She paused a moment dejectedly and glanced up at the remaining piles of bills on her left, shook her head sorrowfully, and then went at her task once more, her pencil flying rapidly, until the sharp click of the latch in the door as it was released made her start and look up.

In the doorway in her nightgown, with a trifling pink robe flung about her shoulders, stood Doris’s sister Rose. Her arms were outspread from frame to frame of the doorway as if she were half afraid and were clutching for support. There was a mingling of defiance and fright in the attitude of her dark bobbed head, shingled close in the back with one heavy, wavy lock hanging over her left eye.

“Doris Dunbar, what on earth are you doing down here at this time of night?” she challenged excitedly. “And in this room ! The very first night Daddy was taken away! I think you are terrible !”

Her voice broke in a sob and she tossed back the wavy lock of hair resentfully, showing big, frightened eyes.

Doris half rose, started, and looked at her with troubled eyes.

“Why, Rose, dear! I thought you were asleep!”

“Asleep! How could I sleep, with Florence carrying on in her room across the hall, moaning like a sick baby? And you, not coming to bed hour after hour! I don’t believe I shall ever sleep again! I’m frightened! I don’t see what life has to be this way for, anyway. It’s awful ! I wish we were all dead! I wish we’d never been alive !”

“Hush, dear! You’re all excited! Come, I’ll put these things away and turn out the light, and we’ll go upstairs.”

“I don’t want to go upstairs. I shall scream murder if I have to hear Florence moan once more! I know I shall. I can’t stand it!” And she suddenly slumped, sobbing, into a chair.

“I can’t stay in this terrible room. I see Daddy’s dead face all the time. Let’s go, quick! What are you waiting for?”

“I must put these papers away, dear. It won’t take but a minute. I can’t leave them out. Hannah is so curious.”

“What does it matter? What are they anyway?”

“They are bills, Rose, Daddy’s bills. Awful bills!” she said with a long-drawn sigh and a return of the trouble to her eyes. “But we don’t want Hannah to see them. She talks so. She would tell everything she knew.”

“Bills?” said Rose resentfully. “What are bills? What does anything matter now? Come, quick! I’m all trembling! This room is terrifying! Why should you care about bills? And tonight !” she said reproachfully. “It doesn’t seem respectful to Daddy.”

“They’ve got to be paid,” said Doris sorrowfully, “and Mr. Hamilton is coming tomorrow to go over everything with us.”

“Well, let him pay them, then—isn’t that a lawyer’s business? It certainly isn’t yours.”

“It’s got to be somebody’s business, Rose, and you know Florence isn’t in any condition to look after business.”

“Oh, Florence!” said Rose scornfully. “She isn’t in any condition to look after anything and never was. I wonder why Daddy ever married her.”

“Don’t!” said Doris sharply. “This is no time to criticize our father. I know he thought he was doing it for our good. I remember he told me so when I was a child. He said he wanted me to know that he never would have brought another woman to take our mother’s place if he had thought he could bring us up right without a mother.”

Rose curled a trembling lip. “Pretty mother she’s been! She’s nothing but a baby!”

Doris wheeled upon her sister. “Rose, you must stop. It is not our place to go back into the past and criticize. We must see to it that we don’t make any mistakes ourselves, and I guess we will have enough to do that way without trying to fix up mistakes of the past. We’re going to have to face some pretty big problems the next few days, and the less bitterness we have in our hearts, the better we can do it.”

“What do you mean, problems?” asked Rose, blinking out from under her lock of hair. “Is there anything I don’t know about?”

“I am afraid there are a good many things we don’t any of us know yet,” sighed Doris, laying the neat piles of bills crosswise upon each other in the open desk drawer. “Here are all these first, and they’re bad enough. Rose, there are over three thousand dollars’ worth of just little bills here, and some of them have been running for months, and as many as five or six notices have been sent begging for money.”

“But I don’t understand! Why didn’t Daddy pay them?”

“I’m afraid he didn’t have the money, dear,” Doris answered in a sad little voice.

“How ridiculous!” flamed Rose. “Daddy was rich! Why, look at the mink coat he bought Florence at Christmas! Look at the rock crystals he bought me—and your little car.”

Doris spread out her hands pathetically. “The bills for them are all here, Rosie, every one! And your silver shoes, and the hats we got last fall, and the new dining room set, and Ned’s radio— all ! Everything that’s been bought lately! And there’s only one payment made on my car! It isn’t mine at all! They have threatened to take it away! Oh, Rose! ”

“I can’t bear it!” screamed Rose. “Let’s get out of this room! I don’t believe it! Daddy wouldn’t do a thing like that!”

“Daddy didn’t mean to, I’m sure. Things got tangled up. He couldn’t help it, I’m positive. There was some investment that failed—I’ve gone far enough to find that out. Come, I’m ready now.”

“Well, why don’t we pay them right away, then?” asked Rose half angrily. “I’m sure I don’t think it’s nice toward Daddy not to get them paid up. Couldn’t Mr. Hamilton tell something? Didn’t Daddy have bonds and things?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Doris miserably. “I’ve only found debts.”

“Doesn’t Florence know?” asked Rose sharply. “It’s her place to. She was his wife. Have you asked her?”

“She goes into hysterics whenever I speak of it. I tried twice yesterday. And she would order the most expensive things for the funeral. I couldn’t seem to make her understand. You see, Mr. Hamilton had hinted to me that Daddy was in trouble financially, but that he would see us through till things were straightened out. It is awfully embarrassing.”

“But what did Florence say when you told her?”

“Oh, she just cried and said that I was dishonoring my father by not wanting to have everything just as it ought to be for his funeral. I had to stop.”

“Of course you did, Dorrie! She’s a selfish pig. She could understand if she wanted to. She doesn’t want to see things as they are. Daddy has kept things smooth and comfortable for her all these years, and now she thinks we ought to. But I’m not going—”

Doris stopped the words by laying a soft hand over her sister’s lips. “Don’t, dear! I can’t bear any more tonight. Come, let’s go to bed. You come over into my room, and then you can’t hear Florence so clearly. I wonder why Ned doesn’t come. He might have stayed at home tonight!”

“I should think so!” said Rose indignantly. “He’s another! He wants his way almost smoothed before him. Have you told Ned?”

“Yes, I tried to tell him a little before dinner tonight while Florence was upstairs, but he just had time to whistle and say, ‘Hard luck, kid,’ and that was all. Then Florence came in and began to fuss about dinner not being ready on time, and after dinner he went out.”

“Yes, that’s the way Ned always does, just acts as if everything ought to go on right without his doing anything. Just shirks all responsibility no matter what comes. He makes me tired. I don’t see why we have to have all this trouble.” And Rose caught her breath in a sob again.