When Joyce awoke the next morning it was with a feeling of trepidation
lest she had overslept and would not be able to accomplish all that she
must before twelve o’clock.
She hurried around anxiously, folding her newspaper bed into an
innocent-looking pile, putting away her things carefully for any
possible scrutiny, and eating a hasty breakfast of crackers, cheese and
what was left of her bottle of milk.
When everything was neat and trim she took out her dress and sat down
to sew, wondering if perhaps she ought not to run out and find what
time it was before she started to work. But fortunately the town clock
settled the matter by chiming out nine o’clock. Three hours before she
must be at Mrs. Powers! Well, there was only the collar and cuffs to
sew on, the skirt to hem and the pockets to make. She could get along
without pockets if necessary, but she really needed them. If only the
collar would fit and not have to be made over again or cut down or
anything.
She put in the hem swiftly. That was plain sailing, as it was carefully
pinned. Then she put on the cuffs and tacked them in place, and donned
the gown. Yes, the collar fitted nicely. With a relieved mind she took
it off again and faced on the collar. While she was doing so the clock
struck ten. If she hurried there would be time to make the pockets.
It was half past before she finished the collar and tacked on the
girdle. Somehow her fingers seemed terribly slow. She cut two strips
from the organdie, bound them with blue and sewed them at the top of
two patch pockets. It was striking eleven as she pinned the pockets in
place and began to sew them on with strong, firm little stitches, but
ten minutes would see it finished. She drew a long breath and began
to think of what was before her. Mrs. Powers had sounded pleasant but
condescending. Well, one could keep still and obey orders, and after
all, condescension didn’t hurt anything but one’s pride. What was
pride? She could stand almost anything for just once.
She must stop at the store on her way and get a clean gingham apron.
She ought to have a white one for table waiting also. If there was
anything cheap enough she would get it. If there was only another two
hours she could easily make one. But there wasn’t. She broke off her
thread for the finish, and laid aside her thimble and scissors happily.
Well, the dress was done anyway.
She wasted little time in putting on the new garment and smoothing her
hair, feeling quite neat and trim as she locked her door and hurried
down the street. Mrs. Bryant eyed her approvingly from her kitchen
window.
“She certainly is a pretty little thing,” she said to herself. “I wish
I had a daughter like that. It’s going to be a real comfort having her
right near this winter when Jim is away. I’m glad we let her have the
lot.”
Joyce bought her other gingham apron, and found a tiny white one,
coarse, but neat, for fifty cents, and with her two aprons presented
herself at Mrs. Powers’ door at exactly twelve o’clock.
Mrs. Powers herself opened the door, her hair in crimpers, herself
attired in a somewhat soiled pink silk kimona:
“I forgot to mention that you might come to the side door,” she said
loftily, “but it doesn’t matter this time.”
Joyce paused on the threshold and surveyed her silently. She had never
met anything quite like this, nor dreamed that people who served others
had to endure it. She was minded to flee at once, till she remembered
that she had promised to get the dinner and that it was probably too
late for the woman to get any one else now. She must be a lady, even if
her employer was not.
Before she could speak, however, Mrs. Powers entered upon her
introduction to the work.
“You don’t object to washing dishes I hope. The lunch and breakfast
dishes will have to be cleared away before you can do much. Here’s the
menu for tonight, I’ve written it out so there won’t be any mistake.
I never like to have to give directions twice. Fruit cup. You’ll find
the things in the store room, oranges, grape fruit, some white grapes
skinned and seeded, I like plenty of grapes in it, and there’s a can
of pineapple. Then we’ll have a clear soup. Do you know how to make
soup? I’m sure I don’t know what you’ll make it out of. You can look
around and see. Perhaps there’s some stock. Then for the meat course
we’ll have chops and creamed potatoes and peas. There’s lettuce in
the garden, and tomatoes in the refrigerator. You make mayonnaise, do
you? Mrs. Bryant spoke of that I think. Well, that fixes the salad
all right. Then ice cream and cake and coffee. I’ve ordered the ice
cream, of course, but I’ll need two kinds of cake. I always like to
have two kinds. That’s all, I believe. Now, I’m going up to lie down. I
really must or I’ll look like a rag, but I shall expect you to have the
diningroom and kitchen cleaned, the peas shelled, and the mayonnaise on
the ice by the time I come down. Then I shall feel easy. You’ll need
to scald and skin the tomatoes too, and get at your cake as soon as
possible. It’ll need to get cold before icing. Now, do you think you
understand it all?”
Joyce looked at her with frank amusement as she rolled out the
sentences, tolling off the tasks as if they were trifles and expecting,
actually expecting all that work to be done. In spite of her a fresh
young laugh rang out as if it were all a joke. The lady eyed her
curiously, uneasily. What kind of a young working person was this
anyway that laughed at her tasks and came to the front door for
admission?
“I want dinner promptly at seven,” she said haughtily. “Do you feel
sure you will remember all I have told you?”
“I’ll do my best to accomplish as much as possible, Mrs. Powers,” said
Joyce, remembering the ten dollars and sobering down. “There isn’t any
too much time, I guess.”
Joyce undid her bundle and enveloped herself in her clean gingham apron
as she spoke:
“Now, if you’ll show me where to find your materials.”
“Yes,” sighed the lady comfortably, leading the way to the kitchen. “I
hope you’ll let me know right away if there’s anything else you need,
because I hate to be disturbed when I’m taking a nap.”
She trailed away from the scene before Joyce realized the whole
situation, or it is doubtful if she might not have fled even yet.
The kitchen was stacked with soiled dishes in every available spot,
and soiled dish towels, grocery bags huddled together between piles of
plates and pans and potato peelings. It was evident that not only the
breakfast and lunch dishes were unwashed but also the dinner dishes
of the night before, and possibly some from lunch of the day before.
It was a wreck of a kitchen and no mistake. Joyce stood still in her
pretty new blue dress in the midst of it all, appalled at what was
expected of her. It seemed to her that no two girls could accomplish
all that had been given her to do before seven o’clock. The cooking
alone was enough to keep her on the jump, without all the cleaning. She
was minded to get at the preparations for dinner first and leave the
clearing up to take care of itself when the lady came down again, only
that absolutely nothing could be done until there was a clean place in
which to work.
Joyce had been in hard places before, with a meal ahead to get for
company in a short time, and had rather enjoyed the sharpening of her
wits to win the game and get it done in time. But never had she had
such a kitchen as this to deal with. At first glance her soul revolted
from having to touch it. The floor was grimy and messy with things
spilled on it. Numerous dishes standing under the sink out of the
way with fragments of food burned hard to them showed discouraging
impossibilities ahead. The sink was filthy with grease and the dish-pan
filled with greasy water. It was all simply unspeakable. She scarcely
knew where to begin.
Investigation showed there was no hot water, and that the source of it
was in a tank heated by a small laundry stove in the cellar, which was
out. Joyce descended the cellar stairs, found an axe, and split up a
box, and finally got the laundry fire going. Then she came upstairs,
and put three pans and the teakettle full of water to heat on the gas
range. While they were heating she went to the refrigerator to see what
was on hand for that soup which she was supposed to make.
The refrigerator proved worse than anything she had yet seen in the
house, and greatly needed a good cleaning, but there was no time for
refrigerators. She was weary in every bone and sinew now thinking of
all that must be done before six o’clock. But she gathered out whatever
was worth using, some chicken bones, a small piece of boiled beef, a
left-over lamb chop, a bowl of chicken gravy, a few lima beans, and
a cup of mashed potatoes. Not a very promising array. She cleared a
spot on the kitchen table, skimmed the grease from the gravy, cut the
fat from the meat, and put the whole array on to simmer with a little
water. A little foraging brought some onions and carrots to light,
which she diced and put in with the mixture. By this time the water was
hot and she scalded the tomatoes and skinned them, putting them on the
ice to harden. Then, with her soup and salad well under way, she felt
more at her ease to go at the cleaning.
The first job was the sink, and it took fully ten minutes to reduce
it and the dish pans to order. Then, as she could not find any clean
dish towels, she washed out those that were soiled and hung them out
in the back yard. They would be dry by the time she needed them, for
there was a good breeze blowing. She glanced at the clock as she came
in. Forty minutes of the precious seven hours was gone and scarcely an
impression made on the dreadful-looking place. She looked around in
despair. The second relay of hot water was ready, and she went to work
gathering first all the soiled silver and putting it to soak in a pan
full of suds while she scraped up the dishes and sorted them in orderly
files. Everything would have to soak before it was washed, for food had
been smeared over them all and left to dry. By the time the sorting
was done the silver washed easily, and she put them into the rinsing
pan, and filled the first pan with a pile of plates to soak while she
washed off the drain board and shelf and made room to drain her dishes.
Inch by inch she cleared places and filled them with clean, steaming
dishes, filling her pans again and again with hot water. The laundry
stove was getting in its work by this time and the water from the
faucet facilitated matters, nevertheless, it was half past two before
she had every dish subdued and standing in clean, dry rows on a clean,
dry table ready to be marshaled into pantry shelves that sadly needed
cleaning, but could not have it now. She must get that fruit dug out
and on the ice at once.
She turned her attention to cake next, and when it was in the oven went
at the mayonnaise dressing. She had made a chocolate layer cake, rich
and dark, with a transparent chocolate filling and thick, white icing,
and was just taking a sponge cake, light as a feather, out of the oven
when the mistress arrived, fine and cool in a light crêpe de chine,
her hair marcelled and her face powdered to the last degree, leaving a
perfume of luxury in her wake as she moved.
“Mercy!” she exclaimed. “Is that all the cake you’ve made? And look at
the time. You’ll have to frost that, of course. It’s too plain that
way. Have you fixed the salad? And, oh, I forgot to say--There’ll have
to be hot biscuits. I hope you can make good ones. Mr. Powers is very
particular about his biscuits. He likes them light. I must say you
might have scrubbed this floor a little bit, and by the way, I wish
you’d run up by and by while your vegetables are cooking and wipe up
the bath room tiles. My son took a bath this morning just before he
went off on a trip and he left water all over the floor.”
Joyce turned suddenly from setting the hot cake carefully on a
cake-cooler and faced the lady. Her cheeks were two pink flames and her
eyes were bits of blue ice. For just one second words trembled on her
lips, words that were not humble nor gentle. Here was a woman much like
Nannette, who appeared, to think the world was made all for herself.
Joyce longed to lay down the knife with which she had loosened the cake
from its pan and walk out of the kitchen as she had walked out of her
cousin’s kitchen a few days before, never to return, but she reflected
that she could not go on walking out of situations all her life that
she did not like, and moreover it would be a mean thing to leave the
lady with her dinner only half got and company coming. It was obvious
the lady was unfitted to get it. And then, she had promised to do it.
The lady had depended upon her and she must stick. Why not make a game
of it, something that had to be overcome and won? So she let her lips
soften into a smile and answered with a twinkle of amusement:
“Why, I’m not sure I’ll have time, Mrs. Powers, but I’ll do my best.
Things were pretty badly messed up here, you know, and it all took
time. By the way, Mrs. Powers, Mrs. Bryant told me that your husband
was on the School Board. I wonder if you could tell me whether there
is likely to be any opening for a teacher next fall? You know I am a
teacher. That is, that’s what I’ve been getting ready to be.”
There was something, just a shade of fineness perhaps, in the way Joyce
spoke, a kind of sense of being above littleness and an air of being
there to help her purely as a favor, that made the lady the least
bit ashamed of having asked her to wipe up the bath room floor. She
stared at Joyce a minute in that superior sort of surprised way, as if
suddenly some ribbon or powder puff or bit of lace she had been using
had risen up and claimed a personality, and then she answered in a cold
little tone:
“Why, I’m sure I don’t know. There might be. If you put this dinner
over well and get it all done on time I’ll try and remember to speak to
him about it. Mr. Powers loves good dinners, and he might do something
for you. I’m going down in my car now to meet my friend and I wish
you’d answer the telephone while I’m gone and keep an eye on the front
door. And don’t for mercy’s sake let anything burn. I just hate to have
the house smell of burned food when guests arrive. Don’t forget the
bath room floor, and have plenty of biscuits.”
The lady sailed away again after having peered into the refrigerator at
the tomatoes and fruit cup getting chilled, and sniffed at the kettle
of soup on the back of the range, with never a word of commendation.
Something strangely like tears came into the girl’s eyes as she turned
back to the kitchen and reviewed the work still to be done, looking
despairingly at the clock. Quarter to five! Could she do it? One thing
she was sure of, she would never work for this woman again if she could
help it. There seemed to be no pleasing her. It had been quite another
thing to get dinner for Mrs. Bryant, who was delighted with everything
she did. This woman treated her as if she were the very dust under her
feet. Perhaps she had made a mistake in consenting to do kitchen work.
Perhaps she had lowered herself in the woman’s eyes and hurt her chance
of getting a school. Well, she must forget it now. It was all in the
game and she was out to win. It was just another hindrance put in her
way, a net to get her ball over, a wicket through which she must pass.
She would win out in spite of it. So, trying to coax a laugh into her
throat instead of a sob, she went to work with redoubled vigor.
When the cake was frosted and standing white and beautiful in the
window to dry she slipped up to the bath room, wiped up the floor and
tidied it a bit. It needed a vigorous cleaning but she had no time
to give it. Then she hurried down to shell the peas and scrape the
potatoes. When they were on she would feel easier in her mind. There
was a stalk of celery in the store room and a few English walnuts.
The salad would look prettier if she diced the celery and stuffed the
tomatoes with celery and nuts. She must try to get time. It wouldn’t
take a minute. Then the lettuce must be got from the garden. It ought
to be in salt water this instant.
The next hour was a wild whirl. It seemed, as she rushed from table
to range and from refrigerator back to the kitchen, that she had been
rushing, rushing, ever since she left home, and she was tired, oh, so
tired.
The biscuits were in the oven and the potatoes and peas bubbling gaily
on the stove, the chops were in the broiler and Joyce was trying to
set the table, when Mrs. Powers returned with her guest. After taking
her to the guest room upstairs she came languidly down to see how the
dinner was getting on. She said no word of commendation, but a look of
satisfaction dawned in her eyes as she saw the orderly row of salad
plates, daintily and appetizingly arrayed on the kitchen side table,
and caught a glimpse of the two cakes in the pantry window smooth and
glistening in deep frosting. Joyce caught the look or perhaps she would
not have been able to go on through the next trying hour.
“Mrs. Powers, I can’t find but one of those rose napkins you said you
wanted to use. Could you tell me where else to look?” she asked as the
lady returned to the diningroom.
“Why, I’m sure they are in the drawer,” said the lady sharply as if
somehow Joyce must have lost them herself. “They’re always right
there.” She came and looked herself.
“Well, I guess they didn’t get sent to the laundry,” she admitted at
last reluctantly after a hasty slamming of sideboard drawers. “Oh, here
they are. How tiresome! Well, you’ll just have to take them down to
the laundry and rub them out. There’s no other way. The others simply
aren’t fit. Here, take these. You’ll find the electric iron right down
there and you can iron them dry.”
Joyce paused aghast.
“But the dinner,” she said. “Things will burn, and I’m afraid it won’t
be on time if I wait to do that.”
“Well, you’ll have to manage somehow. I’m sure I don’t know what else
you can do. We’ll have to have dinner late then I suppose, although Mr.
Powers hates that. He always says never hire a person twice who can’t
get meals on time. It’s the worst fault--”
But Joyce had seized the napkins and was already on her way down to the
laundry, her lips set in a hard, determined little line. The School
Board should never be able to say she couldn’t be on time, even if it
was the School Board’s wife’s fault that she couldn’t be. She would win
out and have dinner on time anyway.
So with a quick turn of the faucets, and a fling of the soap, she
rubbed out the necessary napkins, and while they were soaking for a
minute, hunted out the electric iron and set it heating. Up the stairs
again to her dinner to watch the chops and turn the lights under
the vegetables a little lower, breathlessly down again, such a wild
scramble! Quarter to seven it was when she came up again with the three
neatly ironed napkins in her hand and wildly flew into the diningroom
to finish setting the table. The sweet potatoes were browning in their
sugar bath and she had to watch them closely that they did not burn. It
meant flying back and forth continually--and oh, there were the olives,
the ice water, and cream for the coffee. Would the dinner ever be
ready and served? And where was her apron?
The last five minutes were a nightmare. She could hear the front
door open and the voice of the two gentlemen as they entered. Which
one would be Mr. Powers? The gruff, deep one, or the high falsetto?
And then came the awful minute when she donned the new white apron,
and came to sign to Mrs. Powers that all was ready. The clock in the
living room was chiming seven with silvery tones as she signalled her
readiness, and she thought she saw a look of surprise and relief in
the languid eye of the hostess, but she stayed not to make further
discoveries. She would have her hands full for the next few minutes
without knowing whether the lady was pleased or not.
“Surely He shall deliver thee--”
What was it that Bible verse said that ran through her head with
every pulsation of her racing blood? Why should a Bible verse come so
persistently into her mind just now when she was too busy to think
about anything? “Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the
fowler, and from the noisome pestilence”--that was it. The snare of the
fowler was the little things that caught one. Well, He had delivered
her. He had helped her to smile instead of to be annoyed. Was she
winning out? Dinner was on time anyway.