No one quite knew when or how Jeannette had become indispensable to the Payson household; but she had. Most of all had she become indispensable to Mrs. Carrie Payson. Between the two there existed a lion-and-mouse friendship. Jeannette's ebullient spirits had not undergone years of quenching from the acid stream of Mrs. Payson's criticism. Jeannette's perceptions and valuations were the straightforward simple peasant sort, unhampered by fine distinctions or involved reasoning. To her Mrs. Carrie Payson was not a domineering and rather terrible person whose word was law and whose will was adamant, but a fretful, funny, and rather bossy old woman who generally was wrong. Jeannette was immensely fond of her and did not take her seriously for a moment. About the house Jeannette was as handy as a man. And this was a manless household. She could conquer a stubborn window-shade; adjust a loose castor in one of the bulky old chairs or bedsteads; drive a nail; put up a shelf; set a mouse-trap.
In the very beginning she and Mrs. Payson had come to grips. Mrs. Payson's usual attitude of fault-finding and intolerance had brought about the situation. Jeannette had rebelled at once.
"I guess I'll have to leave to-day," she had said. "I'm going back to the factory."
"Why?"
"I can't have nobody giving me board and room for nothing. I always paid for what I got." She began to pack her scant belongings in the little room on the third floor next to Hulda's. A council was summoned. It was agreed that Jeannette should help with the household tasks; assist Hulda with the dishes; flip-flop the mattresses; clean the silver, perhaps. This silver-cleaning was one of Mrs. Payson's fixed ideas. It popped into her mind whenever she saw Hulda momentarily idle. Hulda did endless yards of coarse and hideous tatting and crocheting intended ultimately for guimpes, edgings, bands and borders on nightgowns, corset covers, and pillow slips. Pressed, she admitted an Oscar in the offing. She had mounds of stout underwear, crochet-edged, in her queer old-world trunk. When, in a leisure hour, she sat in her room or in the orderly kitchen she was always busy with a gray and grimy ball of this handiwork. Mrs. Payson would slam in and out of the kitchen. "There she sits, doing nothing. Crocheting!"
"But mother," Lottie would say, "her work's all done. The kitchen's like a pin. She cleaned the whole front of the house to-day. It isn't time to start dinner."
"Let her clean the silver, then."
Jeannette ate her meals with Hulda and before a week had passed she had banished the grubby and haphazard feeding off one end of the kitchen table. She got hold of a rickety old table in the basement, straightened its wobbly legs, painted it white, and set it up against the kitchen wall under the window facing the back yard. In a pantry drawer she found a faded lunch cloth of the Japanese variety, with bluebirds on it. This she spread for their meals. They had proper knives, forks, and spoons. The girl was friendly, good-natured, helpful. Hulda could not resent her—even welcomed her companionship in that rather grim household. Hulda showed Jeannette her dream-book without which no Swedish houseworker can exist; told her her dreams in detail. "It vos like I vos walking and yet I didn't come nowheres. It seems like I vos in Chicago and same time it vos old country where I ban come from and all the flowers vos blooming in fields and all of sudden a old man comes walking and I look and it vos——" etc., ad lib.
Jeannette's business college hours were from nine to four. She went downtown in one of Charley's straight smart tailor suits, revamped, and a sailor with an upturned brim that gave her face a piquant look. She did not seem to care much for what she called "the fellas." Perhaps her searing experience of the automobile ride had scarred that side of her. Lottie encouraged her to bring her "boy friends" to the house, but Jeannette had not yet taken advantage of the offer. One day, soon after her induction into the Prairie Avenue household, she had turned her attention to the electric. Lottie had just come in from an errand with Mrs. Payson. Jeannette waylaid her.
"Listen. If you would learn me to—huh? oh—teach me to run that thing you ride around in, I bet I could catch on quick—quickly. Then I could take your ma around Saturday mornings when I ain't at school; and evenings, and you wouldn't have to, see? Will you?"