CHAPTER XVII
THE cook could not get along with Jenny. Jenny gave notice and acted upon it promptly, deaf to remonstrance, because her young man was going to get her a place as waitress so she wouldn’t “have to lower herself” doing housework. The laundress was ill with influenza and the substitute laundress did not wash the baby’s clothes clean. That was why Mrs. Warner, coming into her daughter’s house one morning in January, found Cecily herself in the laundry bending over a tub of diapers. Cecily was disheveled and a little defiant at her mother’s protest.
“I don’t see what else there is to do. If I can’t get help, the children have to have clean clothes, don’t they?”
Mrs. Warner, looking as incongruous in the laundry as a person possibly could, shook her head, simply implying that some things like washing diapers were quite impossible.
“You shouldn’t do things like this. You ought to manage somehow.”
“But how, mother?”
“Send the clothes over to my house. Get another laundress.”
“There isn’t one to be had for two days, and to send a bundle of clothes across the city is really too silly.”
“Make your cook do them.”
“And have her leave! No, that would be the last word. I’m through now. Wait until I hang these up and let’s go upstairs.”