“Dearie—dearie!” Mrs. Sturgis expostulated more than once. “Whatever makes my lovie so cross this morning? ... You’ll get another position, dearie,—if that’s what’s troubling you.”
“Oh, you make me tired!” thought her daughter, angrily, though the words were unsaid.
“Well, I do hope we can at least have some other kind of dessert,” she said aloud. “We always have to rush so infernally through dinner; it makes me sick! ... Or, I’ll tell you what,” she went on hopefully, “we can get in a little ice.”
“It will leak all over the floor,” Alice objected. “The old thing is full of holes.”
“There’s nothing better than O’Day’s strawberry cream,” Mrs. Sturgis declared; “and there isn’t a thing in the house, so I can’t make a pudding.”
Jeannette said nothing further but gloomed in silence. She elected to be furiously energetic, and undertook a thorough cleaning of the studio, strewing strips of damp newspaper over the floor, sweeping vigorously, her head tied up in a towel. The broom shed its straw, and she discovered little triangles of dirt in obscure corners which Alice had evidently deliberately neglected. The white curtains were dingy, the front windows needed washing, and in the midst of her cleaning, Dikron Najarian came in upon her to ask her to walk with him in the afternoon. In a fury she attempted to move the piano to pull loose a rug, and in the effort, which was far beyond her strength, she hurt herself badly. Her mother found her lying on the floor, crying weakly.
“Dearie—dearie! What happened to you! My darling! You shouldn’t work so hard; there’s no necessity for your being so thorough.”
The girl had really injured herself. Mrs. Sturgis called wildly for Alice, and between them they carried her to her room and laid her on her bed. She had wrenched her back, but she refused to admit it. She wouldn’t be put to bed. She was all right, she told them; just a few moments’ rest, and she would be herself again. It was twelve o’clock and Roy would be there at one!
She lay on her bed, and gazed blindly up at the old familiar discolored ceiling; presently her eyes closed and two large tears stole from under her lashes and rolled down her cheeks. She knew she had hurt herself far more seriously than she would let her mother or sister suspect. Something had given way in the small of her back; she made an effort to sit up, and the pain all but tore a cry from her. But she was determined they should not know; she would get up, and meet Roy, and go through with dinner as though nothing was the matter!
Struggling, with tiny explosions of pent-up breath and smothered groans, her hand at every free moment pressed to her side, she managed to dress herself. The effort exhausted her; a film of perspiration covered her forehead, her upper lip and the backs of her hands. She steadied herself now and then by leaning against the dresser, until her strength came back to her. She did not care, now, whether Roy Beardsley found the studio clean or not, whether or not he was hustled through dinner, thought her home cheap and poor, her mother and sister commonplace and fussily solicitous.