Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/16

6 speaking through the only corner of her mouth free from pins.

"All right," Reba replied listlessly, and went out of the room.

It was always like this—week after week, year after year. It never changed—never, never, never! It never would! Reba knew her way blindfolded down the dim cellar stairs to the coal-bin. In the winter every afternoon at dusk the furnace had to have its shovelful or two of coal. All the year around, every afternoon at four her mother had to have her spoonful of patent medicine in a quarter of a glass of water. Every afternoon, too, an hour before supper-time, the draughts of the kitchen stove had to be opened, its lids slipped back into place, and the tea-kettle moved over the coals. Reba went through the motions of these tasks as unconsciously as she walked. She had been performing them all her life. The sisters kept no "help." They preferred to do their own work to cleaning up after some slovenly hired-girl, they said. For the same reason they made all their own clothes. Dressmakers were careless and slipshod; their seams were never properly finished.

Reba sighed again, as she stood in the orderly kitchen before the soapstone sink, wiped dry and spotless, and measured off the usual dessert-spoonful of peppermint-smelling mixture from one of the big brown bottles, empty dozens of which filled a closet down-cellar. When she returned to the bedroom she placed the glass on the table beside her mother, making no comment and receiving none. Crossing the room to her low chair by the window, she sat down, letting her hands lie quietly in her lap with their palms