At twenty-seven Jo had been the dutiful, hard-working son (in the
wholesale harness business) of a widowed and gummidging mother, who
called him Joey. If you had looked close you would have seen that now
and then a double wrinkle would appear between Jo's eyes--a wrinkle that
had no business there at twenty-seven. Then Jo's mother died, leaving
him handicapped by a death-bed promise, the three sisters and a
three-story-and-basement house on Calumet Avenue. Jo's wrinkle became a
fixture.

Death-bed promises should be broken as lightly as they are seriously
made. The dead have no right to lay their clammy fingers upon the
living.

"Joey," she had said, in her high, thin voice, "take care of the girls."

"I will, ma," Jo had choked.

"Joey," and the voice was weaker, "promise me you won't marry till the
girls are all provided for." Then as Jo had hesitated, appalled: "Joey,
it's my dying wish. Promise!"

"I promise, ma," he had said.

Whereupon his mother had died, comfortably, leaving him with a
completely ruined life.

They were not bad-looking girls, and they had a certain style, too. That
is, Stell and Eva had. Carrie, the middle one, taught school over on the
West Side. In those days it took her almost two hours each way. She said
the kind of costume she required should have been corrugated steel. But
all three knew what was being worn, and they wore it--or fairly faithful
copies of it. Eva, the housekeeping sister, had a needle knack. She
could skim the State Street windows and come away with a mental
photograph of every separate tuck, hem, yoke, and ribbon. Heads of
departments showed her the things they kept in drawers, and she went
home and reproduced them with the aid of a two-dollar-a-day seamstress.
Stell, the youngest, was the beauty. They called her Babe. She wasn't
really a beauty, but some one had once told her that she looked like
Janice Meredith (it was when that work of fiction was at the height of
its popularity). For years afterward, whenever she went to parties, she
affected a single, fat curl over her right shoulder, with a rose stuck
through it.

Twenty-three years ago one's sisters did not strain at the household
leash, nor crave a career. Carrie taught school, and hated it. Eva kept
house expertly and complainingly. Babe's profession was being the
family beauty, and it took all her spare time. Eva always let her sleep
until ten.

This was Jo's household, and he was the nominal head of