Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/282

270 and his wife had gone off to a roof-garden. She found her cherished decorations thrown together in a closet, and she put them away in her trunk, her lips twitching with a pained indignation. The insult was two-edged, though it hurt her most by impugning her taste as a housekeeper. "Dang the girl," she said. "A few years ago she 'd not 'a' behaved so—er if she did, she 'd 'a' got well spanked fer it!"

She was up early and had breakfast ready for Bailey in the morning, with a cheerful countenance that changed, for a moment only, when she understood from his long and shamefaced explanation that he was going to take Hetty out to dinner in a restaurant and would not be home to the meal. Here was an insinuation that her cooking was not all that it might be! He invited her to come with them, but she knew better than to accept. "Never mind me," she said. "I 'm too old to be gaddin' about."

Hetty's manner during the day seemed to have a suggestion of silent triumph in it, but nothing was said. The mother could not speak of what was in her thought, and the daughter would not. Mrs. Joliffe could only wait and watch, hoping that what seemed to her an unreasonable anger in the girl would abate for want of provocation. But Hetty was determined to have her mother understand that she could not be ignored and put aside in her own house; and as her mother yielded, bewildered and hurt, Hetty pressed on to the realization of the plans that she had made before her marriage.