He had rolled it out in a grand, solemn way, quite as he read prayers every morning and night at Greenfield.
Everything had conspired to turn the little maid's brains topsy-turvy. Her head felt actually light at her awakening from the sound sleep that had finally overcome her. There was a queer strained aching all through her, and she had never been crosser in her life.
It was still raining. The ground was sodden; the trees drooped miserably under the weight of wet leaves; the sky was one sullen, obstinate cloud, heaviest and most obstinate toward the west faced by her bedroom windows.
No church or Sunday-school to-day. No show of her famous self to an admiring congregation. Dreams and hopes came down with a cruel thump to the realities of every-day home life. True, she put on, of her own accord, stockings and shoes, and there were always clean clothes for Sunday, but there were week-day clothes, and there were fried middling and corn bread for breakfast, just as if nothing had happened. The coarse food stuck in her throat; the common crockery—white, with fluted green edges—the pewter spoons, the tin coffee-pot, the heavy grayish-blue mug out of which she drank her "hot-water tea" (i.e. milk and water sweetened), had not offended her taste yesterday, or ever before. Now they were disgusting and humiliating.
"You ain't eatin' nothin'!" remarked the mother, as the girl sat back in her chair after a vain attempt to behave as usual. "Do you feel sick?"
"No, ma'am. I'm just not hungry. I don't know why. I reckon I'll go up stairs and lie down."
"Let her alone. She'll be all right after a while," said her father, as her mother began to scold, and Flea got herself out of the room as quickly as possible.
She could never be all right in this house, she was sure. Nobody understood, or sympathized with her. She was stifled and cramped. So far as the discouraged heroine could foresee, every day to come would be like this and all those that had gone by—all rag carpet, and green-edged crockery, and sugar-raggy babies, and Bea's old frocks made over and let down, and fault-finding—
"Flea!" screamed her mother, from the bottom of the stairs, "ain't you coming down to-day? Here's your sister with all the things to wash up and put away."
Flea was lying face downward on the unmade feather bed, dry-eyed and wretched, when the call came. In sinking and sickness of heart she obeyed the summons, the very click of her shoes on the stairs expressive of unwillingness. Nothing she had read or heard of heroinic behavior helped her to go through with the drudgery of scraping plates, rinsing, washing, and wiping crockery and pewter.