McAllister had almost unwound the ball as he talked, and what was left of it rolled down under the table.
Here Bellamy came in, and McAllister took his indolent self away. “What have you been doing?” Mr. Bellamy asked his wife. She gathered up the worsted and said, impatiently: “I’ve been talking to my idle and destructive brother.”
CHAPTER VII.
It was six by the time Mrs. Warrener reached her own door. The aspect of Grand Street had changed. In the early twilight of the November afternoon the wooden houses bordering her street stood out clear-cut and fearlessly ugly. All the Felter children were playing in the yard, their piercing screams over their games of pleasure welcomed her ears. The little things, with red tam-o’-shanters on their heads, tore about hither and thither, calling in loud, penetrating voices.
Fanny Bellamy had said, “How do you do, Mrs. Wawenner,” in a voice like an angel bird’s. As Gertrude went up her steps she saw the Slocum Daily on the mat. Usually she seized upon the paper eagerly, but to-night she did not even lift it from the stoop.
In answer to the bell, the maid-of-all-work, Eliza, ran to the door. It was washday, and she exuded soapsuds. In her uncombed and dusty hair, little flakes of soapsuds still clung; she wore a gingham apron, with which she wiped her steaming face as she let her mistress in. For the first time Mrs. Warrener saw Eliza with eyes from which the scales of custom had fallen, and the cordial smile extended by one maid’s mistress who is conscious that she is just so little better because she has as much to spend a week as the maid has a month, did not this evening light the lady’s face.
“Eliza, never go to the door again without a white apron.”
The woman stared blankly, and her silent astonishment further aggravated the mistress.
“And fix your hair,” she said, severely, “and keep the kitchen door shut.”
Dinner smells which for years unremarked had greeted Mrs. Warrener’s nostrils, odors of kitchen and soapsuds, sickened her to-night; but before she could turn to go upstairs her attention was forcibly called to account by Eliza, who, with arms akimbo, cried to her: