Investigation showed there was no hot water, and that the source of it was in a tank heated by a small laundry stove in the cellar, which was out. Joyce descended the cellar stairs, found an axe, and split up a box, and finally got the laundry fire going. Then she came upstairs, and put three pans and the teakettle full of water to heat on the gas range. While they were heating she went to the refrigerator to see what was on hand for that soup which she was supposed to make.
The refrigerator proved worse than anything she had yet seen in the house, and greatly needed a good cleaning, but there was no time for refrigerators. She was weary in every bone and sinew now thinking of all that must be done before six o’clock. But she gathered out whatever was worth using, some chicken bones, a small piece of boiled beef, a left-over lamb chop, a bowl of chicken gravy, a few lima beans, and a cup of mashed potatoes. Not a very promising array. She cleared a spot on the kitchen table, skimmed the grease from the gravy, cut the fat from the meat, and put the whole array on to simmer with a little water. A little foraging brought some onions and carrots to light, which she diced and put in with the mixture. By this time the water was hot and she scalded the tomatoes and skinned them, putting them on the ice to harden. Then, with her soup and salad well under way, she felt more at her ease to go at the cleaning.
The first job was the sink, and it took fully ten minutes to reduce it and the dish pans to order. Then, as she could not find any clean dish towels, she washed out those that were soiled and hung them out in the back yard. They would be dry by the time she needed them, for there was a good breeze blowing. She glanced at the clock as she came in. Forty minutes of the precious seven hours was gone and scarcely an impression made on the dreadful-looking place. She looked around in despair. The second relay of hot water was ready, and she went to work gathering first all the soiled silver and putting it to soak in a pan full of suds while she scraped up the dishes and sorted them in orderly files. Everything would have to soak before it was washed, for food had been smeared over them all and left to dry. By the time the sorting was done the silver washed easily, and she put them into the rinsing pan, and filled the first pan with a pile of plates to soak while she washed off the drain board and shelf and made room to drain her dishes. Inch by inch she cleared places and filled them with clean, steaming dishes, filling her pans again and again with hot water. The laundry stove was getting in its work by this time and the water from the faucet facilitated matters, nevertheless, it was half past two before she had every dish subdued and standing in clean, dry rows on a clean, dry table ready to be marshaled into pantry shelves that sadly needed cleaning, but could not have it now. She must get that fruit dug out and on the ice at once.
She turned her attention to cake next, and when it was in the oven went at the mayonnaise dressing. She had made a chocolate layer cake, rich and dark, with a transparent chocolate filling and thick, white icing, and was just taking a sponge cake, light as a feather, out of the oven when the mistress arrived, fine and cool in a light crêpe de chine, her hair marcelled and her face powdered to the last degree, leaving a perfume of luxury in her wake as she moved.
“Mercy!” she exclaimed. “Is that all the cake you’ve made? And look at the time. You’ll have to frost that, of course. It’s too plain that way. Have you fixed the salad? And, oh, I forgot to say—There’ll have to be hot biscuits. I hope you can make good ones. Mr. Powers is very particular about his biscuits. He likes them light. I must say you might have scrubbed this floor a little bit, and by the way, I wish you’d run up by and by while your vegetables are cooking and wipe up the bath room tiles. My son took a bath this morning just before he went off on a trip and he left water all over the floor.”
Joyce turned suddenly from setting the hot cake carefully on a cake-cooler and faced the lady. Her cheeks were two pink flames and her eyes were bits of blue ice. For just one second words trembled on her lips, words that were not humble nor gentle. Here was a woman much like Nannette, who appeared, to think the world was made all for herself. Joyce longed to lay down the knife with which she had loosened the cake from its pan and walk out of the kitchen as she had walked out of her cousin’s kitchen a few days before, never to return, but she reflected that she could not go on walking out of situations all her life that she did not like, and moreover it would be a mean thing to leave the lady with her dinner only half got and company coming. It was obvious the lady was unfitted to get it. And then, she had promised to do it. The lady had depended upon her and she must stick. Why not make a game of it, something that had to be overcome and won? So she let her lips soften into a smile and answered with a twinkle of amusement:
“Why, I’m not sure I’ll have time, Mrs. Powers, but I’ll do my best. Things were pretty badly messed up here, you know, and it all took time. By the way, Mrs. Powers, Mrs. Bryant told me that your husband was on the School Board. I wonder if you could tell me whether there is likely to be any opening for a teacher next fall? You know I am a teacher. That is, that’s what I’ve been getting ready to be.”
There was something, just a shade of fineness perhaps, in the way Joyce spoke, a kind of sense of being above littleness and an air of being there to help her purely as a favor, that made the lady the least bit ashamed of having asked her to wipe up the bath room floor. She stared at Joyce a minute in that superior sort of surprised way, as if suddenly some ribbon or powder puff or bit of lace she had been using had risen up and claimed a personality, and then she answered in a cold little tone:
“Why, I’m sure I don’t know. There might be. If you put this dinner over well and get it all done on time I’ll try and remember to speak to him about it. Mr. Powers loves good dinners, and he might do something for you. I’m going down in my car now to meet my friend and I wish you’d answer the telephone while I’m gone and keep an eye on the front door. And don’t for mercy’s sake let anything burn. I just hate to have the house smell of burned food when guests arrive. Don’t forget the bath room floor, and have plenty of biscuits.”
The lady sailed away again after having peered into the refrigerator at the tomatoes and fruit cup getting chilled, and sniffed at the kettle of soup on the back of the range, with never a word of commendation. Something strangely like tears came into the girl’s eyes as she turned back to the kitchen and reviewed the work still to be done, looking despairingly at the clock. Quarter to five! Could she do it? One thing she was sure of, she would never work for this woman again if she could help it. There seemed to be no pleasing her. It had been quite another thing to get dinner for Mrs. Bryant, who was delighted with everything she did. This woman treated her as if she were the very dust under her feet. Perhaps she had made a mistake in consenting to do kitchen work. Perhaps she had lowered herself in the woman’s eyes and hurt her chance of getting a school. Well, she must forget it now. It was all in the game and she was out to win. It was just another hindrance put in her way, a net to get her ball over, a wicket through which she must pass. She would win out in spite of it. So, trying to coax a laugh into her throat instead of a sob, she went to work with redoubled vigor.