Page:Bobbie, General Manager (1913).djvu/36

26 want Tom's wife to be the same bully sort of person Tom was.

The crisis came the next day. At eleven o'clock in the morning, I found Delia putting on her coat and hat, actually preparing to go.

"What does this mean?" I exclaimed.

"Can't you see?" she asked very saucily.

"But the washing. Have you—"

"No, I haven't, and what's more I'm not going to." She was spitting mad.

I stood there, just helpless before her.

"I have telephoned to all the intelligence offices," I said, "and I can't get anyone to come until Saturday night. I thought, to accommodate us, you might be willing—"

She cut me right off:

"Well, I'm not! No one accommodates me here, and I'm not used to being treated like this. Two dinners a day and up until all hours!"

It didn't seem to me as if she had half so much to stand as I did. I wished I could up and clear out too. I thought she was very disagreeable to leave me in the lurch that way. But I didn't have any words with her. I told her she might go as soon as she pleased. I hated the sight of her standing there in the kitchen, which she had left all spick and span, not as a kitchen should look at eleven in the morning with half a dozen full-grown mouths to be fed at one o'clock.

I was on my way upstairs to break the news to Nellie when Elise called to me from the sitting-room.

"Oh, Lucy," she said in her musical voice, "will