Her poor, bare feet were badly swollen. I begged her to let me bathe them in hot water. Mama always bathed our feet in hot water when we had colds or our feet hurt.
“Bien!” she said. “Do so, enfant, if you wish, but it is so hard to get hot water in dese boarding-houses. Ah! very soon I will have dat little house of all my own, and den, you will see, enfant, what it is to be très happy!”
She sighed, as if she were inexpressibly tired, and lay there with her dark eyes closed, and her beautiful soft, dark hair all about her lovely oval face, and I thought to myself again: “She looks like a picture of the Virgin,” and I felt sure that although she was just a poor model, she was pure and good like the Virgin. She opened her eyes after a moment and smiled at me, and she said:
“When I have my little house, enfant, then always ze water will be hot. There will be ze gas on ze stove, and it will give beeg flame. I will have plenty for heat my water. Here, me, I stand and hold for eternity ze little pot to make some water hot on ze little gas jet. It is all stuff up full!” and she closed her eyes again.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I’ll go and ask your landlady for hot water.”
I found my way down to the basement, and very politely I said to the landlady:
“Miss St. Denis has a very bad foot. Will you be so kind to let me have a pitcher of hot water?”
She snapped back at me:
“I guess I give my roomers more hot water than they pay for. Does she think she is paying hotel prices?”
In a begrudging manner, she poured me out half a pitcherful from the kettle on the range. Thanking her, I started to carry it up, but a loose piece of carpet at the foot of the stairs caught my feet. I slipped, and all my precious hot water was lost. The landlady had picked up the pitcher, which fortunately was not broken, and when she saw me crying, she began to laugh uproariously, and seemed to be suddenly good-natured, for she refilled the pitcher.