"Who made it my work any more'n it's Dad's work?" growled Marty. "And she didn't have ter do it if she didn't want to."
Janice did her best to keep to a cheerful tone. "I didn't mind going, Aunty," she said. "And we'll get breakfast so much quicker. I'm hungry."
She endeavored to be cheerful and chatty at the breakfast table. But the very air her relatives breathed seemed to feed their spleen. Mr. Day insisted upon Marty's finishing the hoeing of the potatoes, and it took almost a pitched battle to get the boy started.
Mrs. Day was inclined, after all, to "take sides" with her son against his father, so the smoke of battle was not entirely dissipated when Marty had flung himself out of the house to attack the weeds.
"Ef you'd do a few things yourself when they'd oughter be done, p'r'aps the boy'd take example of ye," said Mrs. Day, bitterly.
Her husband reached for his pipe—that never-failing comforter—and made no reply.
"Ev'rythin' about the house is goin' to rack an' ruin," pursued the lady, slopping a little water into the dishpan. "No woman never had to put up with all I hafter put up with—not even Job's wife! There! all the water's gone ag'in. I do wish you'd mend that pump, Jason."
But Jason had departed, and only a faint smell of tobacco smoke trailed him across the yard.
Janice tried to help her aunt—and that was not difficult. Almira Day was no rigid disciplinarian when it came to housekeeping. By her own confession she frequently satisfied her housewifely conscience by giving things "a lick and a promise." And anybody who would help her could make beds and "rid up" as best pleased themselves. Aunt 'Mira was no housekeeping tyrant—by no means! Consequently she did not interfere with anything her niece did about the house.
The upstairs work was done and the sitting room brushed and set to rights much earlier than was the Day custom. When Janice had done this she came back to the kitchen, to find her aunt sitting in a creaky rocker in the middle of the unswept floor and with the dishes only half washed, deep in a cheap weekly story paper.