Angelica was glad, she was delighted to go. She certainly loved her mother, but a separation of a week, a month, a year, didn’t trouble her, didn’t cause her a pang. She knew in theory that life is terribly uncertain, but she didn’t really believe it. She felt sure that no matter where she went, or how long she stayed, her mother would be there at home, absolutely unchanged.
She was the child who has never been burnt, sitting before the glowing fire. Having as yet never lost anything, she didn’t value anything. In that enticing future toward which she looked, she expected to live once more with her mother. In the meantime it didn’t matter.
"Well!" said Mrs. Kennedy. "I’ll have no one to go to the movies with now."
"You wait!" said Angelica. "One of these days I’ll take you to a real show, mommer!"
Already she saw herself the benefactor. She had forgotten, or perhaps didn’t even know, how limitlessly she had received.
They went to bed in the early morning, and Angelica slept, while her weary mother lay awake at her side in the narrow bed they shared. The room was too dark for her to see anything, but she could hear the breathing of her dear child, and with a furtive hand feel that soft, slippery hair, still fresh and redolent of white soap.
"I’ve got to expect it!" she told herself over and over. "I’ve got to expect it! They all go, for one reason or another. We’ve got to make up our minds to lose everything in this world."
She got up again at six, and set to work cleaning her little flat from end to end, so that it should be ready for Mrs. Russell’s inspection. Angelica insisted upon helping her.
"Oh, mommer, for Gawd’s sake! I won’t get tired, and I won’t get dirty. She won’t come before ten, anyway—prob’ly later. I bet she has her breakfast in bed!"
"She must be a queer one," said Mrs. Kennedy, "from what you tell me."