She spent a miserable afternoon. She scrubbed with conscientious vigour, but with an absent mind. She thought the same thoughts over and over—first, how disappointed Angie would be if the lady never came; then that perhaps, after all, she wasn’t going to lose her.
"Maybe we’ll have supper together again this very night!" she would think hopefully.
Upon the heels of her hope came the certainty that if Angelica didn’t go away now, she would later. It was sure to come; no chance whatever that such a girl would stop there, underground, with her.
When she came down again for the last time, at six o’clock, Angelica was in the little parlour, now black as the pit, and she was so very still that her mother felt disturbed. She was afraid that the poor, proud thing was grieving, and she went in to her, noiseless in her thin old shoes; but when she had lighted the lamp, she saw that Angelica was sleeping, stretched out limp and childish in the big rocking-chair.
Mrs. Kennedy hurried away breathlessly to the grocer’s, to buy a little treat; for weren’t they going to have supper together again after all?
III
It was eight o’clock when Mrs. Russell came. Finding the door unlocked, she walked in without permission, as one is surely privileged to do in so mean a home. They were in the kitchen, with the water running in the sink, and they didn’t hear her come down the hall, didn’t know that she was standing in the door, watching them.
"Well, are you ready?" she demanded.
They both turned and regarded her with just the same look—a fine indignation, a stern surprise—Mrs. Kennedy with both hands plunged in the dish-pan, Angelica holding a dish which she was wiping. They resented the intrusion, and they showed it.
"Yes, I’m ready," said Angelica slowly.