"Why? Has anything more happened to her?" Ma asked.
"Nothing new," I says. "Keddie was drinking all over the house last night. I heard him singing and swearing—and once I heard her scream."
"He'll kill her yet," says Ma. "And then she'll be through with it. I'm so tired to-night I wisht I was dead. All day long I've been at it—floors to mop, dinner to get, water to lug."
"Quit going on about it, Ma," I says.
"You're a pretty one to talk to me like that," says Ma.
She set the radishes on the kitchen table and went to the back door. One of her shoes dragged at the heel, and a piece of her skirt hung below her dress.
"Jim!" she shouted, "your supper's ready. Come along and eat it,"—and stood there twisting her hair up.
Pa come up on the porch in a minute. His feet were all mud from the fields, and the minute he stepped on Ma's clean floor she begun on him. He never said a word, but he tracked back and forth from the wash bench to the water pail, making his big black footprints every step. I should think she would have been mad. But she said what she said about half a dozen times—not mad, only just whining and complaining and like she expected it. The trouble was, she said it so many times.
"When you go on so, I don't care how I track up," says Pa, and dropped down to the table. He filled up his plate and doubled down over it, and Ma and I got ours.