Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/275

Rh was any person in their flat not perfectly happy and willing to let things go on as they had begun.

It was two days later that Hetty began her quiet campaign against the established order.

She had found her first day a day of empty restlessness and dissatisfaction. She missed the noise and bustle of Altgelt's, the chatter of her fellow clerks, and the work to which she had been accustomed. She might have taken some interest in the housekeeping if her mother's incessant activity had not forced her aside and left her idle. She unpacked her trunk, put a few stitches in a torn flounce, changed the trimming of a hat, and washed her yellow hair in the sunlight; but chiefly she wandered from room to room or hung out of the parlor window, vacant-minded, empty-handed, like a girl who has left boarding-school and come home to find nothing to do.

Her mother rarely joked with her, having learned by experience that when a joke falls on a literal mind it is likely to sprout a misunderstanding. When she was not "slushin' about," as she called it, in the kitchen, she was humming "old-country" tunes and rocking happily in a favorite chair, which she had put by the dining-room window. It would be a nice study in psychology to explain why she never sat in the parlor; but she never felt at home there; and if she went in, it was only to stand a moment looking out of the window before she rearranged the curtains and went back to her