She lugged the telescope-bag up the stairs, the wooden steps of which shone like glass. Mrs. Campbell showed her a room at the end of the hall. A mass of things filled it; children’s toys, old baskets, a broken chair. It was like the closets at home, but larger. It was large enough to hold a narrow white iron bed, a washstand, and a chair, and still leave room to swing the door open. These things appeared when Mrs. Campbell had dragged out the others.
Watching her swift, efficient motions in silence, Helen tried again to feel gratitude. But the fact that Mrs. Campbell expected it made it impossible. She could only stand awkwardly, longing for the moment when she would be alone. When at last Mrs. Campbell went downstairs she shut the door quickly and softly. She wanted to fling herself on the sagging bed and cry, but she did not. She stood with clenched hands, looking into the small, blurred mirror over the washstand. A white, tense face looked back at her with burning eyes. She said to it, “You’re going to do something, do you hear? You’re going to do something quick!” Although she did not know what she could do, she could keep her self-control by telling herself that she would do something.
Some time later she heard the shouts of children and the clatter of pans in the kitchen below. It was almost suppertime. She took a cinnamon roll from the paper sack in her bag, but she could not eat it. She was looking at it when Mrs. Campbell called up the back stairs, “Miss Davies! Come to supper.”
She braced herself and went down. It was a good supper, but she could not eat very much. Mr. Campbell sat at the head of the table, a stern-looking man who said little except to speak sharply to the children when they were too noisy. There were two children, a girl of nine and a younger boy in a sailor suit. They looked curiously at Helen and did not reply when she tried to talk to them. She perceived that they had been told to leave her alone, and she felt that her association with a woman like Mrs. Brown was still visible upon her like a splash of mud.
When she timidly offered to help with the dishes after supper Mrs. Campbell told her that she did not need any help. Her tone was not unkind, but Helen felt the rebuff, and fearing she would cry, she went quickly upstairs.
She looked at Paul’s picture for some time before she put it back into her bag where she thought Mrs. Campbell would not see it. Then, sitting on the edge of the bed under a flickering gas-jet, she wrote him a long letter. She told him that she had moved, and in describing the street, the beautiful house, the furniture in the parlor, she drew such a picture of comfort and happiness that its reflection warmed her somewhat. It was a beautiful letter, she thought, reading it over several times before she carefully turned out the gas and went to bed.
Early in the morning she went to the telegraph-office and pleaded again for a job. Mr. Roberts, the manager, was very friendly, talking to her for some time and patting her hand in a manner which she thought fatherly and found comforting. He told her to come back. He might do something.
She went back every morning for a week, and often in the afternoons. The rest of the time she wandered in the streets or sat on a bench in the park. She felt under such obligations when she ate Mrs. Campbell’s food that several times she did not return to the house until after dark, when supper would be finished. She had to ring the doorbell, for the front door was kept locked, and each time Mrs. Campbell asked her sharply where she had been. She always answered truthfully.
At the end of the week she received a letter from her mother, telling her to come home at once and sending her five dollars for the fare. Mrs. Campbell had written to her, and she was horrified and alarmed.
Your father says we might have known it and saved our money, and I blame myself for ever letting you go. I don’t say it will be easy for you here, short as we are this winter, but you ought to be glad you have a good home to come to even if it isn’t very fine, and don’t worry about the money, for your father won’t say a word. Just you come home right away. Lovingly,
Helen hated Mrs. Campbell. What right had that woman to worry her mother? Helen could get along all right by herself, and she wrote her mother that she could. She had a job at last. Mr. Roberts had made a place for her in the office, as a clerk at five dollars a week. She did not mention the wages to her mother; she said only that she had a job, and her mother was not to worry. She would be making more money soon and could send some home.
The letter had been waiting for her, propped on the hall table, when she hurried in, eager to tell Mrs. Campbell the glad news. Her anger when she read it was obscurely a relief. The compulsion to feel gratitude toward Mrs. Campbell was lifted from her. She wrote her answer and hastened to drop it in the corner mailbox.
Running back to the house, she met Mrs. Campbell returning from a sewing-circle meeting. Mrs. Campbell was neatly hatted and gloved, and the expression in her pale blue eyes behind the dotted veil suddenly made Helen realize how blow-away she looked, bareheaded, her loosened hair ruffled by the breeze, her blouse sagging under the arms. She stood awkwardly self-conscious while Mrs. Campbell unlocked the front door.
“Did you get your mother’s letter?”
“Yes. I got it.”
“Well,
