Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/285

Rh At last Hetty happened to say, one day at dinner: "When we have a girl we 'll be able to give little parties." Bailey remained silent, and his silence piqued her. She glanced at her mother and took the old woman's set lips as an unspoken challenge. She remembered how humiliatingly she had been defeated on this point once, and she set herself to carry it now—to make her husband say that she might have a servant if she wished, although she did not intend to get one.

She complained of the need of some one to run out to the grocer's, or to answer the door. She found frequent occasions for remembering that her neighbor had a servant. And although there was no room in the flat for a maid, unless she turned her mother out—and she saw that her mother regarded the matter in this light—she persisted and insisted and took every opportunity to push the question home.

"Hetty does n't want me," Mrs. Joliffe told her son-in-law, with tears in her eyes. "She knows I won't stay here idle, eatin' what I do nothin' to earn. She 'll need me bedroom fer the gurl. I 'll go. I 'll go."

Bailey remonstrated privately with his wife. "That 's all talk," Hetty replied, with more animosity than she really felt. "She 's too old to do the work now, and she 's growing older every day. She does n't get things half done, and the stuff she cooks makes me sick."

She had, in fact, been feeling unwell, complaining of attacks of faintness and eating very little.