"You forget, dear—'Whatever ye do, do it all to the glory of God.' And it means everything, just as it says, even washing pots and pans."
Jean's arms dropped and it seemed to her that the rigid little body within stepped back almost with a sense of release. It was as if her mother had stood so long alone, that any other expression must always be a slight strain.
"Shall I serve the beef, mummy?" Jean picked up an oven cloth and moved to the stove.
"No, dear. It'll spatter and your dress is as clean as when you put it on. If you'll just cube up the cheese—I am getting behind and it's almost six now."
CHAPTER TWO
As Jean had predicted, the summer was a hard one. Martha Norris insisted on taking summer students to board, closing every argument against it with gentle insistence on her own preference.
"If you really want me to be happy, Jean, let me manage the house as long as I can."
That she might some day be physically dependent on others was the one fear that her deepest prayers had not been able to out-root. So Jean yielded.
All summer the house was crowded. The long, hot days were followed by long, monotonous evenings, filled with the complacent mediocrity of the fat Tom, the whinings of the ill-trained Tommykins, the nagging of Elsie.
The boarders ate hurriedly and had no topics of conversation except the schools from which they came and the courses they were taking. For the most part they were women past middle age, all driven by necessity of one kind or another, always striving to get as much for as little as possible. They seemed to Jean to have been cheated of something and to be resentful, some fiercely and some in a timid way that was pitiful. Most of them thoroughly hated their work, which they defended in high-sounding phrases against the attacks of outsiders, and tore to pieces among themselves.