A Daily Rate (11 page)

Aunt Hannah finished all she cared to of her meal and went back to Mrs. Morris. Molly Poppleton sat down to her breakfast in undisguised disgust. Nothing but the prospect of the power that was to be hers held her tongue from expressing her mind on the subject of good food decently cooked. She did not even pretend to eat much, and she looked at the slatternly form of Maggie as she lounged in to gather some plates, with animosity in her eye. She spent most of her time in the dining- room counting the fly specks and the finger marks on the wall and windows. She made up her mind that she would get time for those windows somehow before dinner, if possible. If not, they should be done before another dawn of light and breakfast anyway.

Meantime Mrs. Morris was showing aunt Hannah the house. This room brought so much a week, and that one only so much, and so on, and at each room she had a tale to tell of its various inmates during the years she had kept a boarding-house. Aunt Hannah listened quietly, mentally making notes of what she would and would not do. She saw, without seeming to do so, the worn furniture, the need of a patch on a carpet, or a turning of furniture to hide it, the need of a wardrobe, or bureau in some cases. She set down in her mind the number of window shades torn, or worn out or lacking, and thought how much some cheap muslin curtains would improve things. She felt like a rich fairy, as she went from room to room seeing its needs, and knowing that she could wave a wand and change it all. Sometimes the bareness or the attempt at decoration by the boarder was pitiful. She paused a moment before a picture of a quiet sweet-faced woman, in a dark velvet frame on Harry Knowles’ bureau, and wondered who she was, and if the young man whom Mrs. Morris said roomed there was worthy of a mother with such a face as that. Then she went at Mrs. Morris’ request with her to her room and sat there during an hour of conversation, in which Mrs. Morris, with many sighs and tears, detailed her entire life and troubles for her benefit. Aunt Hannah’s quiet, respectful attention and sympathy led her on until she had unburdened all her heart. Then was the Christian woman’s opportunity, and she spoke the word in season to the other woman, that word which cannot fail to bear fruit in due time. Mrs. Morris, with her empty life and joyless spirit, while she received the words with tears and some gratitude, but gave no outward sign that they had more than touched the surface of her life, yet remembered what had been said to her, and as she sat in the train that afternoon, speeding far away from the scene of her disappointments and disheartening, her fare paid by one Christian, her house taken and managed by another whom she saw must be a true saint, pondered all these things in her heart.

Mrs. Morris was gone, and aunt Hannah descended to the kitchen, bidding the impatient Molly Poppleton wait until she called her.

Just before Mrs. Morris’ departure, she had informed the sullen-looking Maggie that Miss Grant was the woman who was to take her place. Maggie had responded with a significant look, which did not promise much for taking the new mistress into her favor. She met Miss Grant in the middle of the dining-room during her progress to the kitchen. Her hair was frowsy, her dress soiled and torn, and her arms akimbo. Altogether she would have furnished a formidable encounter to a woman who was not used to managing servants and holding the reins of her household well in her own hands.

“I just came to see what you wanted for dinner,” she announced. “There’s some things come from a new place where we never deal. I thought I’d let you know.”

Aunt Hannah thought a minute. Then she said:

“Yes, Maggie, I’ll be out in the kitchen soon to attend to dinner, but meantime it is only one o’clock and there is time enough to get this room in order first. I think you would better wash those windows.”

Maggie stood aghast.

“And what’s the matter with this room, I’d like to know?” she said in a loud, belligerent tone. “It’s just the same as it always is, and What’s good enough for Mis’ Morris ought to be good enough for you. Indeed I’ll wash no windows to-day. I’ve got me afternoon’s work all planned out. This room’ll be swept when I sets the table for dinner, an’ that’s all it’ll get to-day. And you needn’t trouble yourself about comin’ in the kitchen. I never likes to have the missus in the kitchen, it flusters me. I know me business and I ‘tend to it, and I likes to have them as I live with attend to theirs. If you’ve got any orders, give ‘em, and I’ll get dinner on time, you needn’t worry about that.”

Maggie had backed up against the kitchen door, her arms still akimbo, and stood as if to defend the fortress of her domain.

Aunt Hannah waited till she had drawn down a crooked shade and rolled it straight again, pinning the torn edge, before she answered. Then she turned and calmly faced the irate Maggie.

“I always manage my own kitchen, Maggie,” she said, in a quiet voice, “and I intend to do so still. I want this dining-room put in order first, before anything else is attended to. Get some cloths and hot water right away, please.”

There was a dignity about aunt Hannah that was new in Maggie’s experience. She had been accustomed to intimidate Mrs. Morris by such conversation as she had just used, and she supposed she could do the same by her new mistress. She never expected to have it treated with such calm indifference. She was forced to her last resort.

“I can’t stay in a house where things are managed that way. No lady goes into the kitchen. I know me business, and I don’t like to be interfered with. If you ain’t suited with me doing as I think best, I can find plenty of places.”

“Oh, certainly, if you prefer,” said aunt Hannah, pulling down the other shade and fixing it neatly.

“Well, if I do, I’ll go right away, and then what’ll you do?” burst out the astonished Maggie. “There’s all them boarders got to have their dinner. You can’t fool with boarders, you know. They’ll all leave you.”

“I shall do very well,” answered aunt Hannah. “I brought one of my home servants with me, and I can get others very easily. If you choose to stay and do as I say I would like to have those windows washed at once, otherwise you may go.”

Poor Maggie! She was crestfallen. This was new treatment. The mistresses she was used to had to cater to the desires of their servants. She did a great deal of work, and she preferred to do it her way. But aunt Hannah was firm. Molly at that moment, too impatient to begin to be able to wait any longer, put her head in at the door and asked if Miss Hannah was ready for her. That was enough. Maggie tossed her head and declared she would not do another stroke of work in that house, and demanded back pay. Miss Hannah settled up with her, and she departed, leaving Molly monarch of the kitchen and scornfully surveying her new realm.

“IT’S just a pigpen! That’s what it is!” declared Molly Poppleton, holding up her ample calico skirts and clean gingham apron in a gingerly way. “I don’t know where to begin. I didn’t suppose a human being could be so dirty!” Then she plunged into work. The range got such a cleaning as it had not had in years. The ashes were cleaned out, and the soot removed from all its little doors and traps and openings. Molly was not used to a city range with all its numerous appliances, but she had very keen common sense and she used it. She knew dirt and ashes could not help a fire to burn, so she removed them. While she was about it, she gave it a good washing inside and out, for she found the oven encrusted with burned sugar and juice of some sort, and the top was covered with grease. Then, in the most scientific manner, she started a fire, and before very long it was glowing, and the water in the old tank was steaming hot.

It appeared there really was no time for those dining- room windows that day, after all. With skirts tucked together and sleeves rolled high Molly generously used the hot water and soap in the kitchen. She unceremoniously took the old ragged cloths which must have been Maggie’s wiping towels for scrubbing rags, trusting to Miss Hannah’s sense of the fitness of things to provide others in some way. The kitchen table and shelves and windows and paint and sink were scrubbed, and even the floor, and then Molly stood back and surveyed the room now pervaded with a damp atmosphere redolent of soap.

“There! I guess it’ll do for overnight, and the fust chance I get I’ll give it a good cleaning. I never saw the like in my life! How them poor boarders stood it eating out of a dirty hole like this I don’t see. Now, what’s to do? That sink was a caution! The water and dust was all in a mess underneath and the top was slimy! I wonder what the creature that called herself Maggie thought she was made for.”

Meanwhile Miss Hannah had gone to her trunk and arrayed herself in an old grey gingham and a dark apron that enveloped her completely. She had discovered that they must begin at the very foundation before they could hope to do anything toward getting dinner. She investigated Celia’s stores and found they were ample for present needs. Celia’s training had not been for nothing. She knew by intuition that her aunt Molly would enquire for soap and yeast and baking powder among the first things. She had thought of the little things that might not be in stock in Mrs. Morris’ kitchen and had a supply for the present. The stores in the pantry were not very full. There was a plate with a pile of sour white-looking pancakes, another with some lumpy oatmeal, a few boiled potatoes, a bowl of watery soup and two or three ends of baker’s loaves. Miss Hannah applied her nose to one of these and then laid it down again and said, “Bah!”

After looking at the array a few minutes, she gathered them all into a pan and dumped them into the garbage pail. A heavy, lifeless pie on a higher shelf also met the same fate. Then she got the dishpan and some clean hot water and washed a few dishes for her immediate use. Having done this she prepared to set some bread. It was late in the day, but it would not take long, and it could rise while she was doing other things and be baked after the dinner was cooked. Then she could hurry up part of it by making it into pulled rolls so that they could be used for dinner. The bread done she started on a searching expedition for bread cloths and clean rags. She could not work without tools. In one of her trunks was a roll of old rags and linen; with Molly’s help she unstrapped the trunk and searched it out. It was a great satisfaction to have that bread covered with a clean cloth and feel that so much of her work was going on right. She decided that the dishes must all be washed. She and Molly both worked at this, Molly washing off the shelves while she wiped the dishes. By that time it was four o’clock.

“It’s high time we was seeing about the dinner,” said Molly, as she thumped the last pile of plates upon the clean shelf. “What are you going to do for a tablecloth? That one in there ain’t fit, an’ there ain’t a clean one about the drawer anywhere. There’s a pile of dirty ones behind the door in the back stairway. I reckon I’ll have to wash one. As for napkins I should suppose they didn’t use ’em. I can’t find any.”

Miss Hannah went on another hunt, and discovered more soiled tablecloths and a stack of soiled napkins. There was nothing for it but to wash some. Molly already had the washtub going and was working as if her life depended upon it. Well for Miss Hannah’s plans and Celia’s hopes that Molly was equal to emergencies, nay delighted in them, and that she was a swift worker. By the time Miss Hannah had the tablecloth and dishes off the table and the dining-room swept and dusted that linen was swinging in a brisk breeze in the back yard and the irons were growing hot on the range.

“Five o’clock and the table not set yet!” commented Molly. She was working on time and the pleasure of the race depended upon her getting done before Miss Celia should arrive, and being able to ring that dinner bell exactly on time. “Well, I reckon we’ll get through somehow. You can’t turn a pigpen into a parlor in one day, you know. I declare, Miss Hannah, it was a pity to turn that girl loose on the community. We ought to have kept her by main force and taught her how to scrub, before we let her go. The things that wasn’t too filthy dirty to be burned or rusted is burned and rusted, and the things that had anything about them to get lost and broken has got that the matter with them. I reckon we’ll have a few things to buy ‘fore we get fixed out for comfort.”

But Molly was working swiftly all the while she talked. She had filled the little salts and peppers, and rubbed up the knives. The careful Celia had not forgotten bath brick nor silver polish, though there was very little that had any pretension to silver to clean. The dishes and table appointments were of the plainest. Many would have said it was impossible to make any difference in that table without spending a lot of money. Miss Hannah did not think so. She knew the subtle difference between order and disorder, and the startling contrast between cleanliness and dirt. Cleanliness was next to godliness and she was practicing that to-day. The godliness she hoped would follow hard after. While she pulled the little cushions of responsive velvety dough for the rolls, she prayed a rich blessing on that first meal in the house under her care. Then she let her mind wander for a moment to the home she had left which had been no more of a home to her than this was yet to its inmates. She wondered how they were getting on, and if the baby was well. The only drawback to the joy of leaving Nettie’s had been the baby. Aunt Hannah could not help loving babies, and enjoying the clinging of their soft dimpling arms about her neck and their apple blossom breath upon her cheek. The babies always loved aunt Hannah. It was only after they grew older and began to imitate the grown-up people that they began to be saucy, impertinent, and unloving. Even then, Johnnie and Lily had always come to aunt Hannah with a burn or a bump to be comforted, for somehow her motherly arms knew just how best to gather in the troubled little ones and comfort it. But aunt Hannah had no time to think of duties past, and troubles. She gave the last little jerk to the puffy roll and tucked it in the pan to rise for the last time, and then hastened in to set that table. Molly had laid the crisp tablecloth which she had literally forced to dry quickly with her hot irons, on the table and was ironing away for dear life at the napkins. Molly and aunt Hannah had high ideals, brought from comfortable private homes, and they wished this house they had come to take care of to be a home in the best sense of the word. They worked faster now, for the clock was warning them that it was getting late. The roast beef well seared in the most scientific way was roasting away in the oven