“Oh! nothing,” said Boyce, almost airily. “Only Kate and I have been out on a little bender of our own. The store and baby are all right; we left Jim Laurence locked in with them.”
Before Mrs. Smith could reply, the grocery door was opened, and James stood in the entrance with a lamp in his hand.
CHAPTER XLVI.
AFTER THE PARTY.
The next morning after the ball Mr. Smith arose very cross, and Mrs. Smith slept late, so late that Jerusha Maria grew fearfully impatient, and, having slept off her liberal share of the paregoric, wanted to have the usual rough and tumble romp on her mother’s bed. This desire the drowsy woman repulsed with a half-angry growl, that made the child first open her eyes wide with astonishment, then fill her mouth with indignant screams.
This outcry James was expected to pacify, while Kate Gorman got the breakfast in grim discontent, for she too was suffering from want of sleep, and took vengeance on the gridiron and coffee-mill, which she banged about viciously, and ground with the fury of a Nemesis.
While Smith eat his solitary breakfast, which was in itself enough to sour any man’s temper, the coffee being thick with grounds, and the fried potatoes bitter with smoke, Boyce opened the store, and dragged forth his baskets and boxes of merchandise under the sheltering awning; he made a respectable display of vegetables left over from the previous night, and fruit with a suspicion of decay creeping through it; for Smith had slept too late for the early market hour, and even his stock in trade felt the effect of that one night’s advent into high life, the splendor of which had demoralized his home.
Thus it chanced that the store work came entirely to Boyce, and that interesting child, with her screams, her kicks, and wonderful capacity for hair-tugging, fell to James, while Kate scolded, and Mrs. Smith slept.
In vain the lad tried to hush the indignant young lady; in vain he bent his head, and offered a splendid mass of raven curls for her hands to revel in. Once or twice, I am afraid, he was tempted to shake her soundly; in fact, he did practice a little in that line, but ended it all in fun, and finished by making up faces, that turned her continuous howl into shrieks of laughter.
At last Smith went down stairs, wondering if there was no way of stopping that child’s noise, and wishing that he were a woman with nothing to do but sleep till noon, contented as a lamb, with an Irish girl slamming things about, and a jerky child yelling Hail Columbia in his ears.
Mrs. Smith was too soundly asleep to hear this sarcasm, and the young lady aforesaid set up a new tune of offence, feeling deeply wronged, when her father passed down stairs, without an effort to appease her grief.