“Good frend for Isus sake forbeare
To digg ye dust encloased heare
Bleste be ye man yt spares thes stones
And curst be he yt moves my bones.”
She kept her eyes so glued to the spot over the book shelves that finally all turned involuntarily to see what she was gazing on so intently. There it hung! There was no denying it or overlooking it: a great black cobweb that must have been there for several generations of spiders. No doubt it had taken all summer to weave such a mighty web and catch and hold so much grime.
Molly blushed furiously. For a moment, she almost hated Katy and she wholly hated Alice Fern. That elegant damsel had a supercilious expression on her aristocratic countenance that said as plainly as though she had given utterance to her thoughts:
“Author’s Club, indeed! She had much better clean her house.”
Molly was suddenly conscious that every corner was festooned with similar webs. The late afternoon sun was slanting in the windows and its searching rays had found and were showing up every grain of dust. The panes of glass were, to say the least, grimy.
“Oh!” she faltered, “I didn’t know it was so—so—dusty in here. Katy, the new maid, was supposed to have cleaned it before I came.”
“What do you care for a few Irishman’s curtains?” said the hero-worshipping Billie. “No one noticed them until—ahem—until the sun came in the window.” She said sun came in the window but she plainly meant Fern came in the door.
“I haven’t had time to do much housekeeping since I got back,” continued Molly, lamely. “The new maid, Katy, that Edwin got from New York, is most inefficient but so good-natured that I am hoping to train her. The truth of the matter is that she and I spent the whole morning doing things for Mildred and we let the house go. I am going to have a big cleaning to-morrow.”
Molly felt like weeping with mortification and she began to hate herself for making explanations and excuses to Alice Fern. Even if she kept Professor Green’s house festooned in cobwebs from attic to cellar and had dust over everything thick enough to write your name, what business was it of this perfect person? She suddenly realized, too, that that perfect person had never uttered a word although she had looked volumes.