“You’ll let ’em spoil?” incredulously.
“Yes, if necessary.”
Mrs. Harris stopped ironing. She reached out a strong brown hand, and turned out the gas under the irons. She unrolled the sleeves of her brown calico dress. Then she turned slowly toward her resolute mistress.
“Barbara Grafton,” she said with an awful calmness of manner, “you’re an ungrateful, ’ard-’eaded girl, an’ I’m sorry for your family. I come ’ere to ’elp you hout in your trouble,—I ain’t no common ’elp,—an’ you flies in my face whenever you can, an’ goes agin me every chanct you get. What does I do about that? Nothin’. You try to make me spend my time in frills, an’ fussin’ over things as the finest families in Hengland never ’as. What does I do? Nothin’. I goes on my way an’ swallers insults from a chit of a girl. I seen lots o’ things sence I come which ’urt my sensitive disposition, but I passes ’em by. Now it comes to tomatoes, an’ I guess we’ll part. You’re an ungrateful girl, an’ I washes my hands of you.”
Mrs. Harris crossed over to the sink, and solemnly washed and wiped her hands. Then she put on her faded black bonnet, which always hung by its rusty strings from a hook behind the door. She stood a minute, on the threshold, and looked at Barbara in Olympic sorrow.
“Onct more,” she said almost entreatingly, “will you ’elp with them tomatoes?”
“No,” said Barbara.
The screen-door banged loudly. Barbara was alone again.