III
When Phyllis woke next morning everything in the world had a light-hearted, holiday feeling. Her Sundays, gloriously unoccupied, generally did, but this was extra-special. The rain had managed to clear away every vestige of last week's slush, and had then itself most unselfishly retired down the gutters. The sun shone as if May had come, and the wind, through the Liberry Teacher's window, had a springy, pussy-willowy, come-for-a-walk-in-the-country feel to it. She found that she had slept too late to go to church, and prepared for a joyful dash to the boarding-house bathtub. There might be—who knew but there actually might be—on this day of days, enough hot water for a real bath!
"I feel as if everything was going to be lovely all day!" she said without preface to old black Maggie, who was clumping her accustomed bed-making way along the halls, with her woolly head tied up in her Sunday silk handkerchief. Even she looked happier, Phyllis thought, than she had yesterday. She grinned broadly at Phyllis, leaning smilingly against the door in her kimona.
"Ah dunno, Miss Braithways," she said, and entered the room and took a pillow-case-corner in her mouth. "Ah never has dem premeditations!"
Phyllis laughed frankly, and Maggie, much flattered at the happy reception of her reply, grinned so widely that you might almost have tied her mouth behind her ears.
"You sure is a cheerful person, Miss Braithways!" said Maggie, and went on making the bed.
Phyllis fled on down the hall, laughing still. She had just remembered another of old Maggie's compliments, made on one of the rare occasions when Phyllis had sat down and sung to the boarding-house piano. (She hadn't been able to do it long, because the Mental Science Lady on the next floor had sent down word that it stopped her from concentrating, and as she had a very expensive room there was nothing for the landlady to do but make Phyllis stop.) Phyllis had come out in the hall to find old Maggie listening rapturously.
"Oh, Miss Braithways!" she had murmured, rolling her eyes, "you certainly does equalize a martingale!"
It had been a compliment Phyllis never forgot. She smiled to herself as she found the bathroom door open. Why, the world was full of a number of things, many of them funny. Being a Liberry Teacher was rather nice, after all, when you were fresh from a long night's sleep. And if that Mental Science Lady wouldn't let her play the piano, why, her thrilling tales of what she could do when her mind was unfettered were worth the price. That story she told so seriously about how the pipes burst—and the plumber wouldn't come, and "My dear, I gave those pipes only half an hour's treatment, and they closed right up!" It was quite as much fun—well, almost as much—hearing her, as it would have been to play.
... All of the contented, and otherwise, elderly people who inhabited the boarding-house with Phyllis appeared to have gone off without using hot water, for there actually was some. The Liberry Teacher found that she could have a genuine bath, and have enough water besides to wash her hair, which is a rite all girls who work have to reserve for Sundays. This was surely a day of days!