“But look!” she cried. “If she was to come, how’m I going to see her in this pigsty? I ought to fix up; but I ain’t got the heart—I ain’t even got the heart to wash my face,” she confessed looking at Julie piteously, the slow impotent tears gathering in her eyes.
“Never mind, never mind,” Julie comforted her quickly. “You don’t have to worry. I’ll fix it all up for you. You lie down now,” she coaxed. “Lie down and rest a while, an’ I’ll get things straight.”
To her surprise the old woman yielded, and let herself be helped back into bed, where exhausted by all her storms of emotion, she fell asleep almost immediately.
That was the beginning of Julie Rose’s friendship with old Miss Fogg. Thereafter, as the days went by, tenderly, persistently, baffled sometimes by the old woman’s outbreaks of rage and suspicion, or worse still by the terrible inertia of depression which constantly settled over her, Julie gradually won her way further and further with the other, and by the sheer indomitable persistency of her compassion managed to drag her back occasionally almost to the shore of normal life. At least her room and her person were clean and in order, and Julie saw to it that she had regular meals—dainty little lunches cooked by herself. Sometimes she was rewarded by an outburst of gratitude, that usually ended in tears. “You’re good!” the old woman would cry seizing Julie’s hand convulsively. “I don’t know what you want to be so good to a poor old wreck like me for.”
But sometimes she pushed her food away, and refused to eat. “What’s the use of eatin’?” she would weep. “Oh my Lord! What’s the use of anything in this world? Oh, I wish’t I was dead! But I ain’t even got ambition enough to die!”
Sometimes Julie coaxed her with flattery, into tidying herself up. “That black dress certainly is a handsome piece of goods, and that gray one, too,” she said.
“Why, of course I got handsome clothes,” Miss Fogg retorted with a proud jerk of her head. “Why, who do you take me for? I don’t belong with all the common trash that lives in this house. I’ve sewed for all the best people in town. I ain’t used to common people; I’m used to quality. But these folks here—they’re as common as pig-tracks. You don’t s’pose I’d run with them, do you? An’ I’ve always been used to keeping myself nice an’ elegant. I wasn’t one to lay around in wrappers all day. But now—Oh my Lord!”
“Look,” Julie hastily interposed, forestalling the rising tears. “Just see how nice you look with your hair fixed like I’ve done it to-day.”
She held a mirror up, and Miss Fogg peered blindly at herself for a moment in silence. But as she looked a dim satisfaction grew in her face.
“Why that looks real nice, don’t it?” she said, turning her head to one side with self-conscious shyness.