I saw that the gall had bit through the sugar-coat.
"Would you object to giving me some idea of what the Burkes pay?" she asked, with the taste puckering her mouth.
"I should," I replied, rising. "Anyhow, I don't care to undertake the job. Thank you so much for your generosity and kindness, Mrs. Tevis." I nodded—I'm afraid it was a nod intended to "put her in her place." "Good-by." And I smiled and got myself out of the room before she recovered.
I wish I hadn't seen her. I hate the truth—it's always unpleasant.
February 5. Mrs. Burke had thirty-one invitations to-day, eleven of them for her and Mr. Burke. Seven were invitations to little affairs which Mrs. Tevis would give—well, perhaps five dollars apiece—to get to. How ridiculous for her to economize in the one way in which liberality is most necessary. Here they are spending probably a hundred thousand dollars a season in hopeless attempts to do that which they would hesitate to pay me six hundred dollars for doing. And this when they think I could accomplish it. But could I? I guess not. To win out as I have with the Burkes you've got to have the right sort of material to work on, and it must be workable. Vulgar people would be ashamed to put themselves in any one's hands as completely as Mrs. Burke put herself in my hands.
Oh, I'm sick—sick, sick of it! I'm ashamed to look "ma" Burke in the face, because I think such mean things about them all when I'm in bed and blue.
February 6. I decline all the invitations that come for me personally. I sit in my "office" and pretend to be fussing with my books—they give me the horrors! And I was so proud of them and of my plans to make my little enterprise a success.
February 7. Mrs. Burke came in this afternoon and came round my desk and kissed me. "What is it, dear? What's the matter?" she said. "Won't you tell me? Why, I feel as if you were my daughter. I did have a daughter. She came first. Tom was so disappointed. But I was glad. A son belongs to both his parents, and, when he's grown up, to his wife. But a daughter—she would 'a' belonged to me always. And she had to up and die just when she was about to make up her mind to talk."
I put my face down in my arms on the desk.
"Tired, dear?" said "ma"—she's a born "ma." "Of course, that's it. You're clean pegged out, working and worrying. You must put it all away and rest." And she sat down by me.