2
At the iron sink in the Crandall kitchen Peter Brailsford labored to remove the dirt and grease so offensive to the eyes of Maxine Larabee. He scoured with violence, grimly pleased by the stinging of his outraged skin and the smart of the soap in his eyes. He scowled at himself in the broken mirror, scrubbed his ears until they burned, wiped the last trace of his recent shame on Temperance Crandall's roller towel and was running a comb through his wet curls when Early Ann burst radiantly through the kitchen door followed by the less impulsive Gus.
"Early Ann! Gus!" cried the young fellow.
"Peter! Peter!" cried the girl. "I've inherited a farm. We'll all go to the movies."
"Not really?" said the astonished Peter as Early Ann danced him in mad circles about the kitchen.
"Really," said Early Ann. "And it's been sold, and I've got the three hundred dollars above the mortgage."
"Look out," cried the hired man. But his warning came too late. They had jarred the lamp from its shelf, and it fell with a crash scattering glass all over the kitchen floor.
At this inopportune moment Temperance Crandall returned from shopping. She had been cheated two cents on eggs, sniggered at by the pool hall gang, and despite two trips the length of Main Street had not caught so much as a glimpse of Timothy Halleck. Now she discovered her kitchen strewn with glass. Early Ann had her hat over one eye, Peter's shirt tail was out, and Gus was studying the floor.
"I didn't mean to," said Gus. "I was just hunting for some matches for my pipe."
"Didn't mean to," mimicked Temperance. "Didn't mean to. Well you'd just better get busy and clean up that mess."
"Yes, mam," said Gus, looking around for broom and dustpan.
Early Ann giggled. Peter tucked in his shirt tail. Temperance Crandall whisked off shawl and bonnet, donned an apron, clattered the griddles and stoked the fire preparatory to getting supper.
"You're Sarah's hired girl, ain't you?" she asked over her shoulder.
"I'm Early Ann Sherman."
"When your maw used to work for us...." Temperance began. Then catching a murderous look in the kitchen mirror she changed her tune. "Well now, you and Gus had better stay for supper," she said. "There's plenty for all."
"No," said Early Ann. "We're eating at the Ritz Royal this evening. I've inherited a farm." She pulled her coat about her in an Anna Held gesture, adjusted her hat, tilted her lovely chin and started for the door. "Come along, Gus."
"Oh, stay," said Peter.
"A farm!" said Temperance.
"Yes, a farm," said Gus, bent double with the dustpan and feeling surly.
"Nevertheless," said Temperance, "you'd just better stay for supper. What would Sarah ever think if I didn't feed you? Take off your coat, Miss Sherman. And Gus, you can dump that busted glass out on the ash pile."
Smiling again, Early Ann tossed her hat and coat over a chair, tied an apron about her waist, and with the uncanny instinct of one woman in another woman's kitchen began to set the table and to help get supper.
Watching the girl, Temperance sighed. She felt old and tired today. She had never inherited a farm, and never in her life had she had such a peaches-and-cream complexion as Early Ann's. She wished she might have a girl like this one to help her about the house. She supposed that Miss Sherman wouldn't be working any more now that she had come into property, and she put the question to the newly made heiress.
"You bet I'll go on working," said Early Ann. "I'm going to save my money. Except enough for some dresses and maybe a two-week trip to Chicago."
"Are you going to Chicago all by yourself?" asked the horrified Temperance. But Early Ann had made up her mind that she had told the town gossip more than enough.
Gus returned from the ash pile and settled himself in the kitchen rocker with a copy of the "Modern Priscilla" replete with corset advertisements, while Peter loudly announced that if he were taking Early Ann to the movies he would have to shave.
"Shave," scoffed Early Ann. "Let's see...." She ran her fingers over the soft down which covered his cheeks.
"Pin feathers," she said.
Peter ignored her. He dipped hot water from the reservoir at the end of the stove, examined his beard critically in the mirror, and began to lather in a business-like manner. He wished that Maxine might see him now.
Upstairs, Old Mrs. Crandall lay in her bed wondering what it was that had shaken the house a few minutes before. After a time she smelled coffee and knew that there must be company. Temperance and Peter always drank tea for supper.
Deaf and bed-ridden, the old woman still kept in touch with the world with her other senses. Through a rift in the trees she could see the front of the Methodist Episcopal church and in through one of the basement windows. She knew what went on in the elderberry bushes to the south of the church, and she had seen a flash of Kate Barton's red dress through the blinds of the belfry last Thursday and had seen the pigeons and sparrows come out in dreadful fright. You couldn't tell Mrs. Crandall that Kate was practicing and Joe Whalen pumping the organ that afternoon.
Mrs. Pat O'Toole looked to be about five months along with her ninth. Peter Brailsford, from the way he was mooning around, was certainly in love, probably with Maxine Larabee.
Unlike Temperance, Old Mrs. Crandall had no desire to reform mankind. She liked to hum popular music and feel the vibration. She enjoyed love-making, fights, and all the other delightful and rowdy actions of mortals. She lay in a world of almost complete silence, looking out wistfully at the young people going by, and the blowing autumn leaves; feeling the wind pushing against the house. She did not want to die. She wanted passionately to be alive next spring when the lilacs bloomed in her front yard.
The odor of frying meat came up to her from the kitchen, and finally the vibration of her daughter's feet on the stairs. She hastily brushed aside two big tears.
"Temperance," she scolded, "you're late with my victuals."
Supper that evening was of sufficient social importance so that Temperance covered the kitchen oil cloth with her red and white gingham table cloth, but not of a caliber which demanded the use of the gloomy dining room adorned with chromos of dead ducks, fruit, and fish; it was a function worthy of the Crandall cut-glass teaspoon tumbler, but scarcely a feast which necessitated the crocheted and paraffined napkin rings. Temperance brought out her tureen which she herself had painted with blue birds and daisies, but she used the bone-handled knives and forks rather than the silver plate.
"I hear there's been a man snooping around out your way," Temperance began after a hasty blessing, followed by a pan to plate service of fried potatoes, liver and bacon.
"No one you'd be interested in," said Early Ann, as saucily as she dared.
"Don't try to be funny," said Temperance.
Temperance had little luck in eliciting any information about the prowler or about Early Ann's farm. The conversation turned to the latest antics of Ulysses, and of his son Ulysses Jr., who was proving to be a chip off the old block, to Sarah's convalescence, the fall plowing, the hickory nut crop and the plans for a new silo. Not until the dishes had been cleared away and Gus had gone his chaste and solitary way did Early Ann begin to feel confidential.
On the way to the movies she was surprised to find herself telling Peter all about how she had inherited the farm at Horicon, about her mother, and a comic version of the latest Joe Valentine business. She claimed that she had beaten off Joe with a stick of stove wood and she had run him off the place.
"You don't need to worry about me," said Early Ann. "I can certainly take care of myself. I'll bet I can even lick you in a wrastle."
"I'll bet you can't," said Peter indignantly. "Any old day!"