Page:Charlotte Teller - The Cage (1907).djvu/19

THE BACK PORCH Anne flushed over the towel she was ironing.

"Say," questioned Maggie, with a touch of coquetry, "say, why do you live here?"

"Maggie, I've told you a dozen times." Anne was forcible.

"Aw, now," said the girl, "that ain't the real reason. You don't love those little Mikeys and Ikeys that come to your school, do you? You can't make me believe that!"

"Of course," said Anne.

Maggie looked incredulous. The pushing and crowding of seven little human destinies against her own comfort and pleasure had deadened her interest in children in general; and that anyone should choose to work for them when there were spacious rooms, a carriage, a white parasol, and the freedom from child squabbles—she could not sense it. She brought the situation as near to her understanding as possible when she said:

"I bet Dr. Hartwell and Miss Freda couldn't get along without you. Ma says they couldn't. She thinks you're an awful good worker; she thinks an awful lot of you, ma does——"

At that moment a shrill voice from within broke upon her stumbling reflections. "When do you think I want those things, Mag?"

Maggie took up the last tattered dress and disappeared within, saying: "You don't let me talk to nobody, front or back!"

The sharp edge of Maggie's question had cut through Anne's idea of herself: her real reason for living on the West Side?

She stood there thinking, and ironing with more energy than skill, for she had not been brought up to use an iron. In her own home she had had a laundress of her own, as 9