Throwing down broom and dust pan, she bounced out of the room.
Mrs. Parkes looked after the disappearing form of her housemaid in consternation. She was sorry now that she had lost her temper. Servants were so hard to keep that it seemed the height of folly to deliberately send them away. It would have been better to put up with any insolence rather than expose herself to be left alone. How was it possible to run a boarding house without domestic help? Certainly things were coming to a pretty pass if a mistress couldn't say a few plain words of truth. With a weary sigh of discouragement, she picked up the broom and started to do, herself, the work which Hilda had neglected.
The servant problem had bothered Mrs. Parkes for nearly twenty-three years, since the day when she first took upon herself the task of letting "nice rooms with board for select ladies and gentlemen." Left a widow in straitened circumstances after a none too happy married life, and faced with the urgent necessity of doing something for a living, it occurred to her that the best way to provide herself and boy with a home and income was to open a boarding house. She leased an old four-story residence on West Fourteenth Street, and, furnishing it as neatly as possible with the capital at her disposal, she hung out her shingle. Lodgers knocked at the door to inquire, were attracted by the clean rooms, and remained for years. It was hard work catering for the table and looking after the wants of the guests, but Mrs. Parkes toiled uncomplainingly. It would not be forever, she promised herself. When her boy grew up, she could take a rest. He would provide for everything, and they would no longer be under the necessity of taking boarders.
Her boy was Mrs. Parkes' one weakness. There were just three things in which she took special pride—cleanliness of her house, the respectability of her boarders, and her son Harry. Not that there existed any good reason for feeling particular satisfaction over her offspring. Harry grew up as other boys do, but his earning capacity did not grow with him. Like other boys who are made too comfortable at home, he saw no necessity to exert himself, and at the age of thirty he was still living at home, more of a hindrance than a help in the domestic economy, his usefulness being limited to doing odd jobs around the house and keeping tab on the lodgers' accounts. Recently he had found employment in an architect's office, and then he became intolerable. There was nothing that he could not do; no heights to which he could not climb. A good deal of a poseur he wore gold-rimmed glasses, aped the absent-minded manner of the student, and spoke in vague terms of big things he was about to accomplish. That nothing came of them surprised nobody but his credulous and indulgent mother, who lived on year after year in the blissful conviction that one day Harry would astonish the world. If she had any secret worries about her son at all, it was that he might commit some folly with the other sex and marry below his station. Mrs. Parkes was only a boarding house keeper, but she was proud. She did not forget the fact that on her maternal side she was descended from one of the best families in the South. Not that she had any cause to complain of Harry in this respect, but she recalled certain anxieties which her dead husband had caused her in this respect, and she sometimes feared that her son might have inherited some of the paternal traits. For this reason alone she was glad Hilda was leaving. There was no telling what mischief might happen with such a bold creature around the house.
Mrs. Parkes was absorbed in her reflections when the sound of a well-known voice made her look up.
"Hallo, ma! Whatever are you doing that for? Where's Hilda?"
An oldish-looking young man, a pipe in his mouth, newspaper in his hand, stood in the doorway looking at her.
Mrs. Parkes smiled at her son:
"There's no one else to do it, Harry. Hilda is going."
The young man was so surprised that he took the pipe from his mouth, gave an expressive whistle, and came into the room.