"It has old air in it," Pearl said, "and it will give me the fever."
Mrs. Motherwell glared at the little girl. She forgot all about the frying pan.
"Good gracious!" she said. "It's a queer thing if hired help are going to dictate where they are going to sleep. Maybe you'd like a bed set up for you in the parlour!"
"Not if the windies ain't open," Pearl declared stoutly.
"Well they ain't; there hasn't been a window open in this house since it was built, and there isn't going to be, letting in dust and flies."
Pearl gasped. What would Mrs. Francis say to that?
"It's in yer graves ye ought to be then, ma'am," she said with honest conviction. "Mrs. Francis told me never to sleep in a room with the windies all down, and I as good as promised I wouldn't. Can't we open that wee windy, ma'am?"
Mrs. Motherwell was tired, unutterably tired, not with that day's work alone, but with the days and years that had passed away in gray dreariness; the past barren and bleak, the future bringing only visions of heavier burdens. She was tired and perhaps that is why she became angry.
"You go straight to your bed," she said, with her mouth hard and her eyes glinting like cold flint, "and none of your nonsense, or you can go straight back to town."
When Pearl again reached the little stifling room, she fell on her knees and prayed.