“My!” said Mrs. McGibney, “the wash does gather on one so!”
Tommy opened his eyes wide and wrinkled his forehead to express profoundest sympathy. Not only with eyes and forehead, but with elbows, feet, knees and hands, it was his way to show how very attentively he listened to anyone speaking to him; ready to laugh heartily at anything he might be expected to smile at; equally ready to commiserate with anybody.
“Are you feeling pretty well?”—soap dabbed on a McGibney shirt. “How is—” laundry-brush up and down where the soap was, which was at elbows; McGibney would lean on elbows. “Clara? Is she—” up and down with the shirt on the wash-board—“feeling pretty—” wringing out and dropping shirt on pile, on a newspaper, “well?” Pile too high and toppling over, top pieces falling on the floor outside the newspaper. Not a speck on them, but rubbing over for them, anyway.
“Oh, yes, ma’am; Clara is very well. I have left her.”
“You’ve what? You’ve left her?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am!” said Tommy, head bobbing, shoulders, arms, knees, all of him bobbing. “I called to see would you keep these tintypes for me? I’m going to Maddy-gascar, where I hear there’s openings.”
“Why, Tommy, what’s the matter?”
“She don’t keep the house picked up—not saying a word against her,” answered Tommy. “These tintypes is mine, and she can have everything else; but these is mine, and it was my money paid for them down to Coney Island, me and her in them, and all I got in the world I care about, and will you keep them for me till I can send for them from Maddy-gascar?”
“Why, of course I’ll do that, Tommy; but you know you’d never do such a thing as leave Clara. That would be very wrong of you.”
“Oh, yes, indeed, ma’am, very wrong of me! Not saying one word against her, she lies in bed all day and won’t so much as do any sweeping. There’s never any cooking, and I’m tired to death of the delicatessens and rather go to Maddy-gascar and eat spiders, me going in the spider-web industry there. She don’t do no wash like you, Mrs. McGibney, but just rinses out in cold water. She’s so lazy she washes dishes by rubbing newspapers on them. That ain’t so bad as when she does wash them; she washes clothes in the dish-pan and then washes dishes after them—not that I’d say one word against her. So, will you mind the tintypes with her and me in them, ma’am? They’re all I have to care about, ma’am.”