Angelica

by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

ANGELICA

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Mrs. Kennedy got up from her knees, wrung out the filthy and dripping cloth in her hands, and looked back with a sigh over the stairs she had just cleaned.

"It’ll have to do," she said, "until to-morrow."

Then, pail in hand, she descended to the basement and pushed open with her foot the door of her flat—three black little rooms with barred windows on a lugubrious air-shaft, where great ash-cans stood and cats prowled and tradesmen went whistling by with bags and bottles. A tiny jet of gas flickered in the passage to light her as she staggered along to the kitchen, there to set down the heavy pail with a jerk that sent a flood of dirty water over her feet.

"Oh, Lord!" she sighed again, patiently.

She lit the gas and looked about her. There in the sink were the dishes from breakfast; and across the tin covers of the wash-tubs scurried a multitude of roaches, disturbed as they feasted on the crumbs there. All this deeply disturbed her, for she was a good housewife, and a neat little body altogether; but she knew herself to be blameless. It couldn’t be helped.