“I was going to tell you,” went on the lady as Joyce rolled up her apron preparatory to leaving, “I’m giving a little dinner tomorrow and I shall want you again. You might come over about ten. We don’t get up before that, and then you can clear away the breakfast things. We have dinner about five on Sundays. My husband says the day is so long if we don’t have a good many meals. I’m calling up my butcher to get some chickens. Of course he’s closed, but he always serves me after time if necessary. He knows he has to or lose my trade. I think we’ll have some more of those biscuits, and—”
Joyce suddenly broke into the monologue:
“Mrs. Powers, excuse me, but it isn’t necessary for you to finish. I couldn’t possibly come.”
“You couldn’t possibly come? I’d like to know why not? I suppose you have some date or other with some young man—I might have known a pretty girl would be troublesome—”
“Stop!” said Joyce, her voice trembling, and just then above the wild beating of her angry young heart she heard the words:
“Surely He shall deliver thee—”
It steadied her so that she was able to control the flashing of her eyes and to speak quietly, albeit with a trifle of hauteur in her steady voice.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Powers. You have no right to speak to me in that way. I have no young men friends nor any others in this vicinity and no dates with any one, but I do not work on Sunday. I don’t think it’s right. I was brought up to work only six days in the week.”
“For mercy’s sake!” sneered the woman, “and so you refuse to help a person out in a tight place? What possible wrong could that be? We have to eat, don’t we?”
“We don’t have to have dinner parties,” said Joyce quietly.