“Yes, and ain’t it just like ye,” said Katy, “to be coming in late, and all banged up when Miss Eileen has got sudden notice that there is going to be company again and I have an especial dinner to serve, and never in the world can I manage if ye don’t help me!”
“Why, who is coming now?” asked Linda, seating herself on the nearest chair and beginning to unfasten her boots slowly.
“Well, first of all, there is Mr. Gilman, of course.”
“‘Of course,’” conceded Linda. “If he tried to get past our house, Eileen is perfectly capable of setting it on fire to stop him. She’s got him ‘vamped’ properly.”
“Oh I don’t know that ye should say just that,” said Katy “Eileen is a mighty pretty girl, and she is some manager.”
“You can stake your hilarious life she is,” said Linda, viciously kicking a boot to the center of the kitchen. “She can manage to go down town for lunch and be invited out to dinner thirteen times a week, and leave us at home to eat bread and milk, bread heavily stressed. She can manage to get every cent of the income from the property in her fingers, and a great big girl like me has to go to high school looking so tacky that even the boys are beginning to comment on it. Manage? I’ll say she can manage, not to mention managing to snake John Gilman right out of Marian’s fingers. I doubt if Marian fully realizes yet that she’s lost her man; and I happen to know that she just plain loved John!”
The second boot landed beside the first, then Linda picked them both up and started toward the back hall.
“Honey, are ye too bad hurt to help me any?” asked Katy, as she passed her.
“Of course not,” said Linda. “Give me a few minutes to take a bath and step into my clothes and then I’ll be on the job.”
With a black scowl on her face, Linda climbed the dingy back stairway in her stocking-feet. At the head of the stairs she paused one minute, glanced at the gloom of her end of the house, then she turned and walked to the front of the hall where there were potted ferns, dainty white curtains, and bright rugs. The door of the guest room stood open and she could see that it was filled with fresh flowers and ready for occupancy. The door of her sister’s room was slightly ajar and she pushed it open and stood looking inside. In her state of disarray she made a shocking contrast to the flower-like figure busy before a dressing table. Linda was dark, narrow, rawboned, overgrown in height, and forthright of disposition. Eileen was a tiny woman, delicately moulded, exquisitely coloured, and one of the most perfectly successful tendrils from the original clinging vine in her intercourse with men, and with such women as would tolerate the clinging-vine idea in the present forthright days. With a strand of softly curled hair in one hand and a fancy pin in the other, Eileen turned a disapproving look upon her sister.