“I don’t suppose you have, mother,” the miserable girl replied, puzzled as to how she was to make the older woman understand. “It’s—it’s a way you have. I saw that she was hurt about that tinware. She’s been very satisfactory, really. She takes every step off of me that she can. She’s the best in the country—and—and they hang together too. If we lost her, we’d have a hard time getting another.”
“Well, it makes me cross to have to work with them as if they were rotten eggs and we were afraid of breaking one, but if I have it to do I suppose I can. I only looked after the clothes to see that she got the streaks out of them. I knew she was mad about something, but I rinsed them myself; I always do that.”
After Mrs. Hunter was gone Elizabeth thought the matter over seriously. Neither Hepsie nor any other girl they could get in that country was going to have her work inspected as if she were a slave. They were free-born American women, ignorant of many things regarding the finer kinds of housekeeping in most instances, but independent from birth and surroundings. In fact, there was a peculiar swagger of independence which bordered upon insolence in most of the homes from which Kansas help must be drawn. Elizabeth knew that their dignity once insulted they could not be held to any contract.
Mrs. Hunter went back to the kitchen and tried to redeem the mistakes she had made, but Hepsie would not be cajoled and the unpleasantness grew. Saturday night the girl came to Elizabeth and said, without looking her in the face at all:
“Jake says, if he can have th’ team, he’ll take me home. I—I think I won’t stay any longer.”
“Do you have to go, Hepsie?” Elizabeth said, her face troubled.
Hepsie avoided her glance because she knew the trouble was there. Hepsie had been very happy in this house and had been proud of a chance to keep its well supplied shelves in satisfactory condition. Gossip hovered over whatever went on in the Hunter home, and there was a distinction in being associated with it; also Hepsie had come to love Elizabeth more than she usually did her country mistresses. She saw that all the unkind things which were being said about Elizabeth’s stuck-up propensities were untrue, and that Elizabeth Hunter was as sensible and kindly as could be wished when people understood her.
“I’ll be up and around hereafter,” Elizabeth continued. “You don’t understand mother. She’s all right, only she isn’t used to the farm.”
“I guess I understand ’er all right,” Hepsie said sullenly; “’t wouldn’t make no difference, you bein’ up. She’d be a-tellin’ me what t’ do just th’ same, an’ I’m tired enough, washdays, without havin’ somebody t’ aggravate me about every piece that goes through th’ rench.”
She stood waiting for Elizabeth to speak, and when she did not, added resentfully: