Frances expressed admiration for her enterprise.
“It was wonderful for you to think of such a thing,” she said, “But, Minnie, what an awful lot of work and bother for you!”
“I don’t mind that,” Minnie answered scornfully, “I like to work hard.”
They sat up late, discussing the arrangement of the boarder’s room and everything connected with him. They forgot nothing, overlooked nothing, except the effect of all this upon their grandmother.
She lay awake in her room, vaguely bitter, very unhappy. She had died and been buried that evening. She was supplanted. She was no longer to be the guardian of Frankie and Minnie; in the future they were to take care of her. As far as they were concerned, she was unnecessary; she was—one might say—no longer anything but an urn of sacred ashes, to be reverenced as the receptacle of what had once been an important human being.
They heard her coughing feebly.
“No wonder she coughs!” said Minnie. “She will not have the window open the least crack.”
Frances spent all the next day, which was Sunday, in helping Minnie give the boarder’s room a “good cleaning.” They cherished a tradition that they detested such work, that it disgusted and exhausted them, but one had only to hear their voices to know that the vigorous work delighted them and that they were tremendously happy in doing it. Frankie was on her knees scrubbing the floor, while Minnie cleaned the windows. They talked incessantly; when it became necessary for Minnie to clean the outsides of the panes, Frankie always had to stop work and stand beside her, so that she could still hear.
As a sort of silent protest, their grandmother had dressed herself in her best dress and was sitting in the parlour, reading a book of sermons. The girls insisted that they were too busy to go to church.
“I’ll drive you, if you want,” Minnie told her, grudgingly, “but I can’t spare the time to stay through the service.”