“You forgot to put your chair back against the wall, Maria. If we each do faithfully our share of what is to be done, it will be easier for us all.”
“No, the spoons go there ... mercy, no! not the forks!”
“Don’t twitch the curtain so as you go by. It takes all the fresh out of it. I only ironed them yesterday.”
“Why, Maria, whistling! Like a little street boy!”
The July sun might shine and the wind blow outside, inside the house it was always gray, windless November weather. She felt herself curl up like a little autumn leaf, and, with a dry rattle, blow about the rooms before the chill admonitory breath of Grandmother Purdon and Aunt Maria.
Yes, the family elders were right in pitying her, as a child brought up just as badly as it was possible to be; and nobody was surprised or blamed her a bit, when she got out of both families as rapidly and as unceremoniously as she could, by making a very early marriage with an anonymous young man, somebody she had met at a high-school dance. He seemed just like any young man, from the glimpse of him, which was all the family had, before their marriage; but nobody knew a thing about his character or whether he would make a good husband. And, indeed, there was a big doubt in the family mind as to whether Maria Pearl would be any sort of wife or home-maker. How could she have learned anything about rational living, the poor little tyke, hustled from one bad example to another through all the impressionable years of her life? Suppose she kept house like the Manleys! Horrors! Or suppose she took after the Purdons! Her poor husband!
* * * * * * *
Nothing of the sort! There’s not a happier home anywhere in the country than hers, nor a better housekeeper, nor a wiser mother. It’s a perfect treat to visit in her cheerful, sunny, orderly house, or to talk with her well-brought-up, jolly children, or to see her well-fed, satisfied husband. And she herself is a joy to the eye, stout and rosy and calm. She is neither fussy nor slack, neither stingy nor extravagant, neither cold and repressed, nor slushy and sentimental.
How did it happen? Probably Maria Pearl doesn’t know. But I do. And since it has happened, I can see perfectly how inevitable it was. Whenever the routine of her housekeeping begins to set too hard, and she feels like flying at muddy-footed, careless children with the acrimony natural to the good housekeeper, the memory of forlorn little Pearl among the Purdons softens and humanizes her words. And when the balance begins to swing the other way, when she tastes that first delicious, poisonous languor of letting things slide, when her Manley blood comes to the top, she has other memories to steady her. I have seen her sitting at the breakfast table, after the children are off to school, begin to sag in her chair, and reach with an indolent gesture for a tempting novel; and I knew what was in her mind as she sprang up with a start and began briskly to clear off the table and plan the lunch.