MARY EMMA & COMPANY by RALPH MOODY

Author:RALPH MOODY
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W.W.NORTON & COMPANY,INC
Published: 1961-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

to find out about our coal the man at the yard said that, be cause of the storm, we might not get it before the week was out. Lots of other people must have been waiting for coal de liveries, too. That afternoon we had orders at the store for twenty-three bags.

I thought my back would break before we'd finished the last delivery, but it was worth it; Mr. Durant said I'd earned an ex tra fifty cents, and my pay would be two dollars for that week.

When I got home that night our house looked as if the Ladies' Sewing Circle were having a fair in it. There was hardly a chair or table in the whole house that didn't have petticoats or corset covers or blouses or shirtwaists laid out on it, and Grace even had the piano covered with carefully folded stiff-bosomed shirts. She and Mother were so busy that they barely looked up from their ironing boards when I came in, and the kitchen table was piled with more fancy things yet to be done. When Muriel started to put my plate and napkin ring on one corner of the table Grace snapped, "No, he can't eat there; let him eat in the pantry! He'd be sure to slobber, and we haven't any time to wash and starch that stuff all over again."

I started to tell Grace that I didn't slobber any more than she did, but Mother straightened up from her board and said, "I know how exasperated you are, Gracie, but we are not going to have this bickering in our home."

I've seen Grace take some wicked tumbles off horses, and one time she had the calf of her leg ripped open on a barbed-wire fence, but she never cried when she got hurt that way; it was only when she had her feelings hurt, or when she was so mad she couldn't help boiling over. That night it might have been a combination of both. She swiped tears out of her eyes with the back of one hand, crumpled up the corset cover she'd been working on, and threw it back into the basket. "That's the third time I've done this cussed thing over," she half cried, "and every time I mess it up when I get to that insertion in the yoke. What in the world do women have to have all this lace and Hamburg embroidery and beading and frills and ruf-

fles and fiddle-de-dee on their clothes for? Just to show how rich their husbands are and to make it hard to do up?"

"I know just how you feel, dear/' Mother told her. "I went through the same thing when I was learning at the laundry, but as you get more accustomed to it you'll like the frills and furbelows. And just think how fortunate it is for us that the ladies like them too. If their clothes were of the ordinary variety, almost any sort of a washerwoman could do their work for them, and there'd be no reason for them to send it to us.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.