"What’s the matter with the supper?" she said, roughly. "Why ain’t it ready?"
"I just got in myself," said Mrs. Kennedy. "I had a hard day."
"Well, you’re not the only one," said Angelica. "What you got?"
"I’ll have to run to the corner."
"Now, see here!" said her child. "I won’t stand this! I’m not going to wait this way. If you can’t have my supper ready when I get home, I won’t come home—d’ye understand?"
This was but the first indication of a change, a profound change, in Angelica. Her mother saw it with anguish. She was rougher, coarser, more cruel. She was brusque with her mother in a way quite different from her old, careless fashion. She was cold, critical, scornful.
She had got back her job in the factory where she had worked before, but she didn’t bring her money home now. Her mother was obliged to ask for some when she had nothing left to buy what her child demanded; and then, fiercely reluctant, Angelica would throw down on the table a crumpled dollar bill.
Her habits were altogether changed. She spent no more evenings with her mother at home or at the movies. She went about with other factory girls, to dance-halls and cabarets of the cheapest sort. She bought herself daring blouses, thin as a veil, through which her lean brown shoulders shone; she wore short skirts, and had gauzy silk stockings on her long legs; she painted her face with exaggeration.
"Angie!" her mother remonstrated. "You don’t look decent!"
"I don’t want to," she replied.