"You didn't know how to run the sewing machine!" she mocked the little woman who was rising from the hassock, "you didn't know how to use the flat-iron! You were much too fine to do the work you came to do! But the minute my back is turned you sit there playing with my children—" the anger was rising higher and higher now, "and flirting with my husband—" The man arose.
"Bertha!" he exclaimed. But even above the strident shrill of the scolding and the abrupt command of the man's voice and the frightened wail of the littlest girl, rose the cry of Felicia's own anger. Did I say her employer was the angriest woman in the world? I was mistaken. The angriest woman in the world was Felicia Day.
Tiny in stature, absurdly dowdy she stood. She didn't raise her voice after that first cry but its deep contralto seemed to penetrate everywhere. All the petty insults that she had endured through all the dreadful Thursdays seemed as nothing compared to the unjust assault of this unfair person.
"You'd better not talk any more," Felicia's clear voice interrupted the angry tirade. "Because I'm not listening and I'm sure you don't know yourself what you're saying. All day long I've been wondering what I could pretend you were like. First I pretended you were a big coarse zinnia. I don't like zinnias at all but some people do—they are gay and bold. Part of the time I thought I'd pretend you were a weed—a rather pretty weed that chokes flowers out if you don't watch it—but you aren't even as much use as a weed—"
Her employer gave a little scream. She stepped closer to her husband and shook his arm a little. He was staring, as though hypnotized, at Felice.
"Stop her! Make her stop!" the woman screamed. "She's insulting me!
Make her stop!"
He pulled himself together.
"Of course you must stop!" he spoke sternly as though he were speaking to a naughty child. "You must be out of your wits to talk that way! You'd—you'd better go—" he ended tamely.
"Much better," Felicia agreed. "But I'd much better go after I get through telling her what I'm going to pretend she is! She's exactly like the Black Blight—that horrid black thing that makes the green leaves droop and the gay little flowers shrivel up—there's only one thing to do to keep it from killing the whole garden—that's to burn it out with coals!"
"Stop that!" the man commanded sharply.