“Neither. He painted beautiful pictures.”
“Not much money in that, I reckon. He’d better have stuck to the houses. Painters get good wages these days. Well, Ellen, come again. I suppose you’ll be running down for the mail every evening. It’ll be nice for Rindy to have somebody to go on her errands.”
Ellen picked up her package and stalked out, her face aflame and rage in her heart. The red and yellow leaves made no appeal to her. She saw no gay chrysanthemums on her way back. She shut the door savagely as she entered the house, threw the package on the table, and tossed her hat on a chair. Then she walked out to the kitchen where Miss Rindy was.
“Well,” said her cousin, “did you get it?”
“Yes, Cousin Rindy, I did,” Ellen responded. “That horrid woman said you’d probably want all the kinds there are. If you didn’t need them all, you could return whichever package you didn’t want. She is the most inquisitive person I ever saw, and I just loathe her.”
“Whewee! What a pepper-jig you’re in. When you’ve known Maria Perry as long as I have you’ll find it isn’t worth while to get mad with her. She can ask questions, I’ll admit, but she doesn’t mean any harm by it. She’s the chief purveyor of news in the town, and everybody looks to her for it, just as if she were a headline on a newspaper.”
“She asked me if my father painted houses or signs. The idea of such a thing! When I told her he painted pictures, she impertinently said she reckoned there wasn’t much money in it.”
“There wasn’t was there?”
“Sometimes there was a great deal.”
“But it wasn’t what one might call a satisfying, steady income. Never you mind, Ellen, don’t look so much like a thundercloud. Go cool off, child. You’ll have to get used to being talked over; it’s the prerogative of the dwellers in a small place like this. A full description of you will be broadcast all over the town before night.”