"They won't have the windows wide open; they won't get up early, or try to be tidy," she thinks, and her heart grows sore and bitter as she remembers the fruitless struggles of the past two or three days.
"What is the use of trying when no one seems to care whether things are properly done or not?"
She glances round the room. The carpet is worn and frayed; the book-shelves dusty, the curtains faded and torn. Her eyes rest on the piles of unmended stockings. They have been there more than a week already.
"How horrid it all is—how perfectly horrid! Why can't mother see that the whole house is a regular disgrace, and the children too—with their dirty hands and rough hair, and rude, noisy ways? But they won't obey me, though I scold them ever so—and no wonder, with mother always ready to take their part, and tell me not to be hard on them! Of course, they go away and forget everything directly. If mother would only leave them to me, I'd make them mind!
"Eleven o'clock striking, and mother hasn't been down to the kitchen to arrange about the dinner yet! There'll be nothing ready for the children again when they come in from school; and Clara will just muddle through her work as usual. Oh, dear, how sick I am of the whole thing!
"If I could only live with Grannie—or even go out all day, and earn my living like other girls. I'm quick at figures. If I could be a clerk in the City, or something; at least, I should be away from this muddle most of the day. I should be independent, too, and able to buy things for the house when I see they're wanted—and that would help father. Nobody really understands me here, except father.
"Bob was cruel to speak to me as he did this morning; and what I said was perfectly true—his hands did look as though he hadn't washed them for a week. It was my duty to tell him that, and he had no right to fly in a rage, and say I was nagging. Nagging, indeed! Just because I told him that it was disgraceful and disgusting for a big boy to go about with dirty hands!
"They make a good heap, don't they?"