The Widow Sprigg had risen very suddenly. Her face had flushed and a glitter come into the eyes behind the big spectacles, while her lips had closed with a sort of cluck. Leaning across the table, she demanded:
"Give me that bowl, please. I don't need no more your help."
Katharine extended the bowl, as desired, her own face clouding again at sight of the other's darkened one. And she fairly jumped as the housekeeper asked:
"Where's the raisins?"
"Oh! the raisins? Why—I hadn't begun yet. I ate the few I seeded. I'll begin now. I can work right smart if I try."
"Huh! go clean yourself an' clear out. I like to have my kitchen to myself."
Kate leaped from the table, having that odd homesickness stealing over her again, and as much to dispel her own gloom as to keep her word, which she never broke if she could possibly help it, she cake-walked down the long kitchen with the gravest of faces and the most ludicrous of gestures. Down and back, down and back, head thrown sidewise over her shoulder, body bent at an angle which threatened a tumble backwards, and her feet alternately tossing the engulfing apron high on this side, then on that, and now become utterly oblivious of Susanna in her earnestness to distinguish herself—the girl seemed the absurdest creature it had ever been the housekeeper's lot to see.
She still felt insulted by Katharine's term of "servant," but could not repress a smile, and turned into the pantry to hide that telltale weakness.
Looking in through that same pantry window, his mouth agape, his eyes twinkling, was her housemate and natural enemy, Moses. Hitherto he had taken slight notice of the small new member of the household, and Kate had been rather afraid of him. It would, therefore, be killing two birds with one stone, or punishing two annoying people at one time, to pair them off together, thought Susanna, remarking:
"Well, Mr. Jones, when you get done staring at the monkey-shines of that young one you can just take her in charge a spell. Goin' to the wood-lot, ain't ye?"