"Don't let's, dear," she said, and that was all.
IX. Cynthia
As soon as Christopher had passed out of sight, Cynthia came from the kitchen with an armful of wet linen and began spreading it upon some scrubby lilac bushes in a corner of the yard. After fifteen years it still made her uncomfortable to have Christopher around when she did the family washing, and when it was possible she waited to dry the clothes until he had gone back to the field. In her scant calico dress, with the furrows of age already settling about her mouth, and her pale brown hair strained in thin peaks back from her forehead, she might have stood as the world-type of toil-worn womanhood, for she was of the stuff of martyrs, and the dignity of their high resolve was her one outward grace. Life had been revealed to her as something to be endured rather than enjoyed, and the softer adornments of her sex had not withstood the daily splashes of harsh soapsuds—they had faded like colours too delicate to stand the strain of ordinary use.
As she lifted one of her mother's full white petticoats and turned to wring it dry with her red and blistered hands, a look that was perilously near disgust was on her face—for though she had done her duty heroically and meant to do it until the end, there were brief moments when it sickened her to desperation. She was the kind of woman whose hands perform the more thoroughly because the heart revolts against the task.
Lila, in her faded muslin which had taken the colours of November leaves, came to the kitchen doorway and stood watching her with a cheerful face.
"Has Jim Weatherby gone, Cynthia?"
Cynthia nodded grimly, turning her squinting gaze upon her. "Do you think I'd let him see me hanging out the clothes?" she snapped. Supreme as her unselfishness was, there were times when she appeared to begrudge the least of her services; and after the manner of all affection that comes as a bounty, the unwilling spirit was more impressive than the ready hand.
"I do wish you would make Docia help you," said Lila, in a voice that sounded as if she were speaking in her own defense.
Cynthia wrung out a blue jean shirt of Christopher's, spread it on an old lilac-bush, and pushed a stray lock of hair back with her wrist.
"There's no use talking like that when you know Docia has heart disease and can't scrub the clothes clean," she responded. "If she'd drop down dead I'd like to know what we'd do with mother."