It was six by the time Mrs. Warrener reached her own door. The aspect
of Grand Street had changed. In the early twilight of the November
afternoon the wooden houses bordering her street stood out clear-cut
and fearlessly ugly. All the Felter children were playing in the yard,
their piercing screams over their games of pleasure welcomed her ears.
The little things, with red tam-o’-shanters on their heads, tore about
hither and thither, calling in loud, penetrating voices.
Fanny Bellamy had said, “How do you do, Mrs. Wawenner,” in a voice like
an angel bird’s. As Gertrude went up her steps she saw the _Slocum
Daily_ on the mat. Usually she seized upon the paper eagerly, but
to-night she did not even lift it from the stoop.
In answer to the bell, the maid-of-all-work, Eliza, ran to the door. It
was washday, and she exuded soapsuds. In her uncombed and dusty hair,
little flakes of soapsuds still clung; she wore a gingham apron, with
which she wiped her steaming face as she let her mistress in. For the
first time Mrs. Warrener saw Eliza with eyes from which the scales
of custom had fallen, and the cordial smile extended by one maid’s
mistress who is conscious that she is just so little better because
she has as much to spend a week as the maid has a month, did not this
evening light the lady’s face.
“Eliza, never go to the door again without a white apron.”
The woman stared blankly, and her silent astonishment further
aggravated the mistress.
“And fix your hair,” she said, severely, “and keep the kitchen door
shut.”
Dinner smells which for years unremarked had greeted Mrs. Warrener’s
nostrils, odors of kitchen and soapsuds, sickened her to-night; but
before she could turn to go upstairs her attention was forcibly called
to account by Eliza, who, with arms akimbo, cried to her:
“If you ain’t satisfied with me, Mrs. Warrener, you can get another
girl. I ain’t no common, ordinary servant to be spoke to like that.”
Mrs. Warrener turned about at the lower stair. “What are you, then?”
she asked, sharply.
The woman drew a breath of rage. “_What am I?_” she shrieked. “Why,
I’m _help_, that’s what I am! And I’ve got better clothes than you have
upstairs.”
“You can go and put them on,” her mistress said, “and get another
place.”
Too excited to realize what the predicament of being without a servant
meant in a suburban town, Gertrude did nothing to propitiate, and Eliza
left.
From the opposite windows the neighbors watched the departure with
astonishment and much interest, for Eliza had been with the Warreners
eight years. Her red face shone under her feathered hat at the hack
window, and her eyes, when flaming passion was subdued, were full of
tears.
As Gertrude, indifferently, and without a word of good-by, paid
her her money, Eliza sniffled: “I’d of liked to say good-by to Mr.
Warrener--_he’s_ a gentleman.”
When he came in finally to a dinner kept hot on the stove for him, and
served by his wife, she informed him:
“I’ve sent Eliza away.” He was stupefied, and could not believe his
ears.
“Good gracious! What for?”
“She was impertinent.”
Too amazed to speak, he ate his soup in silence; saying at length,
sympathetically: “You’ll have to go up to town to-morrow and get
somebody.”
“I guess I will.”
“I’m sorry for you, Gerty. It will be work for you, and it’s no easy
job to get servants for the country, especially general houseworkers.”
“That’s just it,” she agreed, meditatively. But the idea of going to
town was an excitement to her for the first time, and she had a scheme
already in her mind. If she could find them she would get a cook and
laundress and an upstairs girl. She would economize somehow or other,
and she guessed George wouldn’t mind.