“That was kind,” said Mrs. Anders to herself. “Oscar is a good man.”
So they had left St. Croix, where Ingeborg had been born, and where Mrs. Anders had lived for twenty years, and they had come to New York; and Mrs. Anders had tried to repay Oscar’s kindness. From six in the morning until perhaps nine at night she worked, keeping the big, old-fashioned house clean and neat, and cooking meals for Oscar. It was hard work, but she did not mind that. What she did mind was any contact with the alien world outside.
She had led a sheltered life in the West Indies, just with her husband and his people. She had never troubled to learn English, and now nobody understood her; and[Pg 506] her timid air and poor clothes won very little patience for her. She was sick with dread when she had to enter a new shop to buy anything. She would return from one of these expeditions and shut the door of Oscar’s house behind her with a long sigh of relief.
Inside the house there were Oscar and the lodgers, all so cross! Well, let them be; she knew she did not deserve it. She was a respectable woman, and the mother of Ingeborg, and that was something to be proud of. Such a neat little woman, too—small and spare, with a long nose and a thin face with two spots of red on the high cheek bones; but only Ingeborg looked at her kindly now. Her man was gone, and she had nobody but Ingeborg, who was still a child to her mother.
“Oh, thou dear little one!” thought Mrs. Anders, looking at her daughter. “Thou little Ingeborg—so dear!”
Ingeborg was making the coffee. Oscar was a good man, but he ought not to call Ingeborg “dumb.” That was not right. Just think what the girl could do in the house—so clever and quick at cooking, fine ironing, sewing, anything you wanted done—
“The bell!” shouted Oscar. “Ach, Gott, she grows deaf now, the dumb old woman!”
“Ach, I don’t hear dot,” said Mrs. Anders hastily. “I go, Oscar!”
She hurried up the stairs, whispering to herself the English words she might need. She opened the front door, and there was another young man. So many of them came!
“Room?” he asked curtly.