The kitchen was the first place to be attacked, and she carefully examined the stove. It smoked a little. It needed cleaning, and girding on some old aprons she found in the porch, she let the fire go out, and then brushed, and rubbed, and poked at the stove until it was almost as clean outside as it was inside. Her next proceeding was to take everything off the walls, and wipe them down with a cloth-bedraped broom. Then she moved all the dishes off the dresser, washed the chairs, and scrubbed the floor.
Then, and not until then, did she reopen the door into the old man's room. Now he could see what a clean kitchen she had, and how merrily the fire was burning in the stove. It was also twelve o'clock, and she must look about for something more to eat.
Mr. Dillson had not touched his breakfast, so she ate it herself, made him fresh toast, a cup of tea, and a tiny meat hash, then went up-stairs to tidy her bedroom.
The hash was well-seasoned, and the odour of onions greeted the old man's nostrils tantalisingly. He was really hungry now. His wrath had burned down for lack of fuel, and some power had come back to his limbs. He ate his dinner, got out of bed, dressed himself, and limped out to the kitchen.
When he had dropped in his big rocking-chair, he gazed around the room. The girl had done more in one morning than all the women he had ever employed had done in three. Perhaps it would be economy to keep her. He was certainly growing more feeble, and a tear of self-pity stood in his eye.
There she was now, coming from the French-woman's house. She had been over there to borrow sheets, and a flash of impotent rage swept over him. He tried to have no dealings with those foreigners. He hated them, and they hated him. This girl must go, he could not stand her.
The back of his rocking-chair was padded, and before he realised what was happening, his state of fuming passed into one of sleepiness,—he was off, soundly and unmistakably announcing in plain terms, through throat and nose, to the world of the kitchen, that he was making up for time lost last night.
When he opened his eyes, it was late afternoon, and 'Tilda Jane, sitting at a safe distance from him, was knitting an unfinished sock of his, left by his dead wife some ten years ago.
He blinked at her in non-committal silence. She gave him one shrewd glance, with her toe pushed Gippie's recumbent body nearer her own chair, and went on with her work. If he wanted to hear her talk, he could ask questions.
The afternoon wore away and evening came. When it grew quite dark 'Tilda Jane got up, lighted a lamp, put on the teakettle, and with the slender materials at hand prepared a meal that she set before the uncommunicative old man.