Chapter 11

For three hundred and sixty-five days Myrtella Flathers held undisputed sway in the house of Queerington. The Doctor’s semi-invalidism, after his return from Thornwood, threw all responsibility upon her, and while she permitted him to wear the crown, it was she who wielded the scepter. Never had the house been in such immaculate order, nor the young Queeringtons appeared in such presentable garments, and never had the front door been slammed so persistently in the face of unwelcome guests.

For the Queerington family tree was afflicted with too many branches. There were little dry twigs of maidenly cousins, knotted and dwarfed stumps of half-gone uncles and aunts, vigorous, demanding shoots of nephews and niece’s, all of whom had hitherto imposed upon the Doctor’s slender income, and his too generous hospitality.

Myrtella objected to the inroads these invaders made on his time and strength, and she also objected to the extra work their presence entailed upon her. In short, she felt that the family tree needed pruning, and she set herself right heartily to the job. By persistent discourtesy she managed to lop off one relative after another, until she gained for the Doctor a privacy hitherto undreamed of.

“There ain’t a hour in the day that I ain’t headin’ off somebody!” she triumphantly announced one day to the cook from next door. “When I come here you’d ‘a’ thought it was a railroad station, people comin’ and goin’ with satchels; and bells a-ringin’, and trunks being dragged over the carpets. Dirt from the top of the house to the bottom; Miss Hattie with her petticoats hanging down below her dress; and all the neighbor children racing in and out, and actually takin’ the mattress off Bertie’s bed to coast down the stairs on!”

“In the name of St. Patrick!” sympathized Norah, the visitor; “and their pa not doin’ nothin’ with ‘em at all?”

“Who said he wasn’t?” blazed Myrtella instantly. “You’ll be hintin’ around next that I was talkin’ about the Doctor behind his back. You’re fixin’ to lose me my place, that’s what you are doin’.”

“Not me! It’s braggin’ on you I was not over a week ago, sayin’ what a fine, nice cook you was, and how grand and clean it was over here.”

“Of course,” said Myrtella haughtily, “I may not be workin’ fer a lady that’s so smart she wouldn’t even know her own kitchen if she met it walkin’ up the street. I may not work in a house where they pull down the shades and burn red lamps in the day time to keep from showin’ the dirt under the sofa. We don’t keep two servants and not have enough to feed ‘em, but I’m satisfied. At least fer the present. The day will come when I won’t have to be in service to no one. I’m puttin’ by each week, and the time ain’t distant when I’ll be settin’ at the head of my own boardin’-house table, an’ it will be ‘Miss Flathers,’ if you please! You, Bertie!” this to a frail-looking little boy in the back yard. “You git up off the grass this minute! Fixin’ to catch the croup and have me up with you all night, like I was last week.”

“Sure ‘n I might find a worse place than Mrs. Ivy’s,” continued Norah. “A bit of blarney, and frish flowers every day in front of her photygraph, and things right for Mr. Gerald, is all she wants. The last place I worked, —Mrs. Sequin’s, bad luck to her! ... It was a party or a dinner between me and me rest ivery night of the week! Sorra a bit did I care for the whole kit of ‘em, barring Mr. Don Morley, as fine a young gentleman as ever set foot in sole leather!”

“Him that shot Dick Sheeley and run away?”

“Him they laid it on,” said Norah with indignant emphasis. “It was that good-for-nothin’ Mr. Lee Dillingham done it, and Mrs. Sequin a-movin’ heaven to marry Miss Margery off to him. I seen how they was tryin’ to keep Mr. Don from comin’ home and hearin’ the tales they was tellin’. He is worth the whole bunch of ‘em tied in a knot; a gentleman inside and out, and his hand in his pocket ivery time you served him. Ain’t that somebody a-callin’ ye down the back stairs?”

“Let ‘em call,” said Myrtella, to whom these comparisons of past places were replete with interest. “It’s just Miss Hattie; if she’s got anything worth sayin’, she can come down and say it.”

It was evidently worth saying, for a moment later, a thin, sharp-featured girl of fourteen thrust her head in at the door.

“Myrtella, I told you I wanted that white dress fixed. I am going to wear it this afternoon.”

“It’s too early to wear summer clothes,” Myrtella announced, continuing her ironing. “I never sewed the buttons on a purpose, so ‘s you couldn’t wear it.”

“Well I will wear it! I am going right straight up stairs and pin it on.”

As the door slammed, Myrtella turned a beaming face on Norah:

“It ain’t hemmed!” she said with satisfaction.

Norah shrugged her shoulders:

“It would be a cold day that’d see anybody makin’ me do the cookin’ and nursin’, and sewin’ for a family of four, for five dollars a week!”

Myrtella glared at her across the ironing board:

“Who said anybody was makin’ me? I’m paid to do the cookin’ and housework in this house, and if I see fit to light in and boss things ‘round a bit, it’s my own business. Thank the Lord, I got manners enough to attend to it! How much coffee did you come over here to borrow?”