Jacqueline turned slowly toward the dining room door, but as she turned she said aloud, with a toss of her head:
“I don’t have to!”
She looked round to make sure that Aunt Martha heard her, for Aunt Martha had a way of not always hearing saucy and hateful speeches.
“If you stay in this house,” said Aunt Martha, as she unpinned her cheap hat, “you’ll have to do your share, like all the rest of us.”
“Well, maybe I won’t stay in your old house,” Jacqueline told her superbly. “There are better places I can go to.”
“All right,” said Aunt Martha easily. “Trot along—only get those dishes done before you start.”
That was too bad of Aunt Martha, for in the rôle of tyrant, which Jacqueline had thoughtfully assigned her, she ought to have lost her temper at Jacqueline’s threat, instead of turning it into a kind of joke. Since Aunt Martha kept her temper, Jacqueline lost hers. She snatched the tray from its shelf with unnecessary clatter, and she went into the dining room, and banged it down hard on the table. She began to pile the soiled dishes upon it, helter-skelter, with as much noise as if she were a raw Polish girl, just out of the onion fields.
Neil turned a flushed face toward her, where he lay on the couch.
“Tell-tale!” he softly sang.
The justice of the taunt made it sting.