Making an effort to arise hastily from her chair, Mrs. Gray with a sharp cry of pain, suddenly sank backward again.
"Oh, my ankle's plum give out—I can't take one step! But you never mind, I'll lick you some other time, and you needn't fergit it neither. Git right down and clean up that mush, and fix some hot water fer me to put my foot in."
Seeing the helpless condition of the tyrant, Rosa waited long enough before obeying to kiss grandpa, and for him to whisper encouragingly:
"Never mind, dearie; we'll go the very first chance we have, and if we can't do no better, we'll run off."
"There!" shrieked Mrs. Gray, "what did I tell you?" [Page 44.
With some degree of composure, Rosa performed her tasks, for evidently, judging from the groans of the patient, the promised "lickin'" would be indefinitely postponed.
While eating supper, Mrs. Gray divided her attentions about equally between the two helpless victims of her wrath. The sprained ankle was entirely due to the fact that grandpa was gone twenty minutes instead of fifteen, and that she, obliging woman that she was, took it upon herself to make all the arrangements for Mrs. Browning, instead of looking after her own welfare. Not many could be found who would do half as much for others as she.
The grease from that mush would stay in the floor all winter, seriously injuring her reputation of being the best housekeeper in the thickly populated building. She never could endure dirt and disorder, though poverty-striken from the day she married Tom Gray.
On the whole, Rosa was so thoroughly miserable that very little supper could she eat. The thought that she and grandpa would soon find the beautiful land and mother, was all that gave her even the slightest ray of hope. "But," she added mentally, "I am sure mother would tell me to stay and take care of Mis' Gray till she can walk again. She always did do more talking than anything else, mother said so, mebbe she won't whip me."