Forbes was banished, and spent his exile pacing up and down smoking and peering in at the window, where Persis, aproned and wet-armed and with a speck of soot on her nose, buried her jeweled fingers in greasy dish-water, and smoked the while her customary cigarette. She was more fascinating than ever to Forbes, whose mind kept ringing the domestic chimes.
When the kitchen and dining-room chores were done to the satisfaction of Winifred, who demanded as much of her amateur scullions as she would have demanded of her own servants, they were all exhausted. Returning to the living-room, they sprawled in those inelegant attitudes that tired laborers assume. Their minds were jaded with their muscles.
"I never understood before why my servants are so snappy at night," said Mrs. Neff. "If anybody speaks to me I'll cry."
"Pull down your skirts, at least, mother," said Alice.
"They're too far away," sighed Mrs. Neff. "And nobody's interested in my old legs."
Alice, with the fierce decency of the young, rose wearily, bent down, put her mother's ankles together, and covered them with the skirt.
"Isn't it odd," sighed Mrs. Neff, "how we pretend that old people must go along to chaperon the young? It ought to be the other way about."
Alice was too tired to get up. She sank on the floor and laid her head on her mother's knee. And Mrs. Neff put out a thin, white hand upon the girl's soft hair.
"It's a nice little girl, sometimes," she sighed.
"And it would be a nice little mother," said Alice, "if—"