Mother now turned to inspect the contents of the basin. “What ever can have upset Henry this time? I planned that supper specially for him, just the things he usually digests all right.”
A pause. Then, “What can those dark brown crumby lumps be?” she asked aloud. “We didn’t have anything like that for supper.”
Henry rolled his eyes at his father, and then closed them, weakly, helplessly.
His father said from the door, briefly, “We met Mattie when we were at Wertheimer’s and she gave each of the children a cookie.”
“Store cookies?” asked Henry’s mother, more with an exclamation point than a question.
“The regular ginger cookie … a small one,” said her husband.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Knapp.
Behind Mr. Knapp in the obscurity of the hall, Helen slipped shadow-like, silently as a little mouse, back towards the closet where the cleaning cloths were kept. Her father hoped she had remembered to rinse the cloth well.
Mrs. Knapp sat down by Henry. She laid her hand on his forehead and said, “Mother doesn’t want to be scolding you all the time, Henry, but you must try to remember not to eat things away from home. You know your digestion is very delicate and you know how Mother tries to have just the right things for you here. If I do that, give up everything I’d like to do to stay here and cook things for you, you ought to be able to remember, don’t you think, not to eat other things?”
Her tone was reasonable. Her logic was unanswerable. Henry shrank to even smaller dimensions as he lay helpless on the bed.
She did not say a word to his father about having allowed Henry to eat the cookie. She never criticized their father before the children.
She got up now and put a light warm blanket over Henry. “Do you suppose you could get Stephen to bed, Lester?” she asked, over her shoulder. After he had gone, she sat holding Henry’s cold little frog’s paw in her warm hands till his circulation was normal and then helped him undress and get to bed.
When she went down to the kitchen she found that Helen and her father had tried to finish the evening work. The dishes were washed and put away. Helen was rinsing out the wiping-cloths, and Lester was sweeping. The clock showed a quarter of nine.
She looked sharply at what Helen was doing and plunged towards her with a gesture of impatience. “Mercy, Helen, don’t be so backhanded!” she cried, snatching a dripping cloth from the child’s hands. “I’ve told you a thousand times you can’t wring the water out of anything if you hold it like that!” She wrung the cloths one after another, her practised fingers flying like those of a prestidigitator. “Like that!” she said reprovingly to Helen, shaking them out and hanging them up to dry.
Seeing in Helen’s face no sign of any increase of intelligence about wringing out dishcloths, but only her usual cowed fear of further criticism, she said in a tone of complete discouragement:
“Oh, well, never mind! You’d better get to bed now. I’ll be up to rub the turpentine and lard on your chest by the time you’re undressed.” As the child trod softly out of the kitchen she threw after her like a hand-grenade, “Don’t forget your teeth!”
To her husband she said, taking the broom out of his hand and looking critically back over the floor he had been sweeping, “Don’t wait for me, Lester. I’ve got to change the dressings on my arm before I go to bed.”
“Can’t I help you with that, dear?” asked her husband.
“No, thank you,” she said. “I can manage all right.”
As he went out she was reflecting with a satisfaction that burned like fire that she was not as other women who “took it out” on their families when things went wrong. She never made scenes, not even when she was almost frenzied with irritations. She never lost her self-control—except of course once in a while with Stephen, and then never for more than an instant or two. Until the terrifying but really unavoidable breakdown of this evening, no one had ever seen her weep, heavy and poisonous as were the bitter tears she so frequently held back. She never forgot to say “thank you” and “please.” Her heart swelled with an angry sense of how far beyond criticism she was. Come what might she would do her duty to the uttermost.
She went up to Helen’s room, silently did the necessary things for her cold and kissed her good night, saying, “Do try to make your bed a little better, dear. There was a great fold across it today from one corner to the other.”
Then she went downstairs and stepped about the house, picking up odd things and putting them in place: her usual evening occupation. As she hung up Henry’s muffler which lay on the floor at the foot of the coatrack in the hall, her eyes fell on Helen’s coat. She looked at it with mingled pride and exasperation. There was not a woman of her acquaintance who could have taken those hopeless old materials and pieced and turned and fitted and made such a stylish little garment. She had always said to herself that no matter how poor they were, she would die before her little girl should feel humiliated for the lack of decent clothes. And yet … what a strange child Helen was! She had put on that coat as if it had been any coat, as if she didn’t realize what a toilsome effort her mother had made to secure it. But children didn’t realize the sacrifices you made for them.
She had a moment of complete relaxation and satisfaction as she dropped into a chair to
