“Then please get out o’ that chair,” said the Kid, promptly. “It’s my black Arabian horse.”
“Charles!” cried Barbara.
“You take another chair, or play somewheres else,” said Mrs. Harris, calmly. “Runnin’ wild sence ’is mother left, I s’pose,” she remarked, turning to Barbara.
Barbara choked back her astonished resentment at this speech, and returned to the subject at hand.
“It may be that you will not suit,” she said coldly, rising. “Can you cook well, and do you understand gas-ranges?”
Mrs. Harris laughed complacently, eyeing the slender girl before her with amused condescension. “I ’ave cooked for the finest families o’ Hengland,” she announced. “I’ll settle with your father about wages. Now you jest show me the kitchen, an’ then I’ll let you go, as I see this porch ain’t tidy, an’ that there child needs to be attended to, an’ probably the rest o’ the ’ouse wants cleanin’.”
The Kid slunk off the porch as the words “needs to be attended to” pierced his small cranium. He thought it meant chastisement for his last speech, poor child, and saw, with joy, Barbara following this new and surprising person into the house. In Barbara’s mind a sense of resentment and defeat was conflicting with a feeling of relief at the prospect of help. She rejoiced to herself as they passed through the hall, for she had just swept it with her own hands.
“Dreadful dusty mopboards,” said Mrs. Harris, nonchalantly. Barbara’s spirits sank.
As they entered the kitchen, she suddenly remembered that she had left some dishes piled in the sink, to be washed with the dinner things. In her absence, moreover, some hungry boy had been rummaging in the cake-box, and had left crumbs and morsels of food scattered over the table. Mrs. Harris paused on the threshold, and untied her bonnet, while her roving black eyes quickly took in the scene before her. Clean enough it had seemed to Barbara an hour before, but now many things, hitherto unnoticed, suddenly sprang into prominence. She saw that the white sash-curtain at the window was disreputably dirty; that the stove was actually rusty on top; that cobwebs lurked in the corners; and she remembered, with a pang, that the ice-box had not been cleaned since her mother left.
“My!” ejaculated Mrs. Harris. “Well, I’ll get dinner first, then I’ll tackle this lookin’ room. You set the table, Barbara,—ain’t that your name?—an’ I’ll do the cookin’. What meat ’ave you ordered?”