Now that she had secured a refuge, where Angelica might assume respectability among complete strangers, the poor woman’s next preoccupation was to find some way of having her pitiful furniture moved. She went about for days, trying to drive bargains with any one who possessed a cart; but war-time prices and conditions prevailed, and no one cared to accept so unprofitable a task.
In the end she found an Italian who sold ice, coal, and wood in a near-by cellar, and who agreed to do what she wished. She paid him at least six visits, trying to persuade him to take less money, or to promise great care with her scanty belongings, or to reassure herself that he really understood the new address. In order to pay him and to settle her few little bills, she was obliged to sell her parlour furniture, blue lamp and all.
Winter was beginning to set in when they moved. It was a raw and bitter day, blankly gray overhead. Mrs. Kennedy lingered in the old flat where she had lived for twelve years, watching the Italian carry out her things, her heart sick with shame to be leaving the place in this fashion, her parlour furniture sold, her daughter "in trouble." There was nothing left now but the barest essentials—things to sleep on, to be covered with, to cook with, and a chair or two.
Angelica had gone by surface-car to the new home, to await the arrival of the cart. For the moment each of them was alone in a dismal bare flat, hopelessly similar. It was a day of gloom. The removal had brought home to them most forcibly their desperate position, their helplessness, their desolation. They had only each other—no other friend, no other resource.
They set to work at once, in the dusk, to arrange their furniture; and when a barren sort of order had been achieved, Mrs. Kennedy went out in search of the usual little shop where she might buy a bite for Angelica’s supper. She tried her best to be calm, resolute, strong; but her heart was like lead as she hurried through the unfamiliar streets, chilled by a cold wind from the river, and by a far colder and bleaker apprehension.
She caught sight of a brightly lighted little grocery-store, and she went in. Another pang! Here she was no one; simply a poorly dressed stranger with a paltry handful of change. She remembered her own cheerful young grocer with positive anguish. It was almost the last straw.
She came back, half running, with her little bag under her arm, entered the strange doorway, rang the strange bell. Her daughter admitted her.
"I didn’t do much," Angelica said. "I started to scrub the shelves, but I felt tired. Anyway, what does it matter?"
She had been sitting in a dreadful apathy in the forlorn kitchen; she sank down again on the old step-ladder chair.
"If only I had a bit of linoleum for the floor!" began Mrs. Kennedy, looking down at the filthy boards. "A nice check pattern, like Mrs. Stone had——”