Part 4 (2/2)

”I--sometimes my head--I can't always talk to people----”

”Oh, you talk enough,” Mrs. Palmer interrupted, kindly. ”That's just what it is: some talk too much. Mr. Swartout (that's the literary gentleman in brown--the one with the grey moustache) said you were so quiet and dignified. You know you sat at the end, today, for breakfast, and he said to me it would be pleasant if you kept that place. That's what put it into my head, really. And I guess you've had experience enough. Miss Jenny, that went with you through the store when you bought those clothes (I know her, you see) said she'd never seen seventy dollars used with more judgment nor made to go further. I noticed what she said.” She nodded shrewdly, as one who knew the world.

”Well, I don't want to urge, but will you or won't you? I'd give board and lodging and, say, twenty-five a month, till I could do better. The Palmer House has just got to the point where there'll have to be a change, or it'll get second-cla.s.s.”

”Very well, I will try,” said Miss Mary huskily, and in a moment she was alone, for Mrs. Palmer was half across the side-yard.

”Just boss that woman, then, and see if she can get the house clean by evening,” she called over her shoulder. ”I leave her to you, Miss Merry, and it's a weight off me, I can tell you!”

If Miss Mary had paused to think, she would have collapsed into tears and sent for the doctor, but she could not stop, for the cleaning-woman addressed her briskly.

”I suppose everything better come right out and get a good beating?”

she said, shouldering her mop; and Miss Mary controlled her quivering lips, pressed her hands to her head, which must not, _could not_ fail her now, and agreed.

Late in the afternoon Mrs. Palmer dashed over, her hair flying, her dress untidy.

”Well, how'd you get along?” she began, but paused in the doorway of the fresh, aired house, taking in, at one eagle glance, the white curtains behind s.h.i.+ning panes, the polished woodwork, the re-arranged furniture.

”I guess that cleaning-woman met her match,” she announced dryly. ”You must be nearly dead, Miss Merry! And all ready for dinner, too! I've had a clean table cloth put on, and what do you think that Delia said?

'I'll just rub out me ap.r.o.n an' press it off,' she said, 'for if _she's_ to head the table, I can see she'll be particular!'”

Nothing could have kept Miss Mary up but the fact that her own room was yet uncleaned. The l.u.s.t of soap and water had entered into her, and she ate and answered and pa.s.sed the b.u.t.ter dish like one in a dream, looking forward with the last of her strength to sleeping in an immaculate chamber. And at half-past one in the morning, she did so.

The warm bath in the painted tin tub was a luxury she had never imagined; as the sheets received her tired body, aching in every joint, she tasted for the one moment before sleep blotted out consciousness the ecstasy of earned rest after steady, worried toil, and it was very sweet. Privilege of the clumsiest hod-carrier, it was utterly new to Miss Mary, and she in her innocence, thought it due to delight at the prospect of board and lodging and, say, twenty-five dollars a month!

She did not know that she had hummed, unconsciously, during the afternoon, a song of her early girlhood; nor that the blood, long stagnant, that had raced through every vein as she stooped and beat and lifted and cleansed, was driving the crawling vapours from that mysterious grey tissue in her skull that had so long plagued and confused her.

Nor did she know that the flowers on the table, the fresh chintz covers for the worn lodging-house furniture, so recklessly provided by her, the quick neatness of an apotheosised Delia and the gentle, reserved welcome of the new housekeeper herself, were lifting the commonplace boarding-house to a higher and still higher level. She only knew that she worked harder and harder and never wept nor shuddered nor looked out of black apathy into a cruel tantalizing world, whose inhabitants had evil thoughts of her and wished and worked her ill.

”It's just as I always say,” Mrs. Palmer observed, one afternoon in May, as, resting in frank gingham and enveloping ap.r.o.n, she permitted herself the luxury of a cup of tea in Miss Mary's own room. ”What's bred in the bones comes out in the blood. I had a gift for cooking since I was ten, and there's little I'll thank a French chef to tell me, Miss Merry. But I can't impress the boarders. I never could. And I can't get the work out of servant-girls without screaming at 'em--never could. And look at you! Every man of 'em--that we wanted--coming up two dollars a week, like gentlemen. And all for the privilege of having this house bachelor. I thought they would. And every man Jack of 'em booked for November first again. I tell you what, Miss Merry, we'll paint both houses this fall, and I wouldn't wonder, what with this spring being so backward and the season so long, if we could paint and paper inside, right through, would you?”

”No,” said the housekeeper, rocking gently, luxuriating in the half-hour rest after a hard day on her feet with one servant gone.

”No, I wouldn't. That would be nice. I have something saved. You can take that.”

”Look at you!” cried Mrs. Palmer. ”Saving on thirty a month! We'll pretty near go halves, Miss Merry, from next November. What's bred in the bone, as I said--you were born for the business!”

And the sister of Hiram Z. Allen, late Captain of Finance, blushed with pleasure.

It was in March of the next year, as she sat at her neat desk in the little room they had made into an office when they created a sun parlour out of the side verandah, that Delia, responsible head of three maids now, ushered a gentleman in to her.

”The doctor, Miss Merry, that came yesterday about the rooms for his patient in the cottage,” said Delia softly. ”I can't seem to get the name, ma'am.”

”Very well,” said Miss Mary and rose, plumper by eight or ten pounds than she had been, dignified in black broadcloth, only enough of reserve and weighing of her words about her to mark her off slightly from the most of her s.e.x and business.

”Miss Merry? I am Dr. Stanchon, I have been recommended most strongly----”

She swayed before him, then sank into her chair, grasping the arms. He looked courteously alarmed, stared, stared again, then s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand.

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