“This is easier than cracking rock, and the pay is considerably better, but I am just as tired between the shoulders as a common laborer,” Madeleine exclaimed, rubbing the last tray until she could see her own piquant little face reflected in its depths.
“As for me, I feel as if I had been drawn and quartered,” complained Judith. “It’s worth more than fifteen dollars. We should have asked twenty.”
“I would have asked it, if I had thought she could have been induced to part with so much money, but I saw that fifteen was her limit.”
Judith laughed.
“You’re a regular little bargain driver,” she said admiringly.
“No, not always,” answered Madeleine. “Only when I meet another one.”
“Well, I am glad we undertook it, and I am gladder still we have finished it,” said Judith.
They arranged the silver on half of the table, and the small army of carved ivory ornaments, for which Millicent seemed to have a passion, on the other half. Then, removing the loose gloves which had protected their hands, they put on their things and marched into the next room with expectant faces. For the first time in all her life Judith had earned a sum of money, and the humblest wage-earner was not more anxious for his week’s pay than she was.
“Will you please inspect the work, Miss Porter, and give us our money? We are tired and want to go home,” said Madeleine.
Millicent was propped up against some velvet cushions in the window seat. There was an expression of nervous worry on her thin sallow face, and around her on the floor lay the scattered bits of a note she had read, re-read, and torn into little pieces.