Ragged Lady. William Dean Howells

brought to me.”

      “Yes'm,” said Clementina. She moved a little from the bed, on her way to the door, to be ready for Mrs. Lander in leave-taking.

      “I'm real sorry,” said Mrs. Lander. “I presume it's a disappointment for you, too.”

      “Oh, not at all,” answered Clementina. “I'm sorry we can't do the wo'k he'a; but I know mocha wouldn't like to. Good-mo'ning, 'm!”

      “No, no! Don't go yet a minute! Won't you just give me my hand bag off the bureau the'a?” Mrs. Lander entreated, and when the girl gave her the bag she felt about among the bank-notes which she seemed to have loose in it, and drew out a handful of them without regard to their value. “He'a!” she said, and she tried to put the notes into Clementina's hand, “I want you should get yourself something.”

      The girl shrank back. “Oh, no'm,” she said, with an effect of seeming to know that her refusal would hurt, and with the wish to soften it. “I—couldn't; indeed I couldn't.”

      “Why couldn't you? Now you must! If I can't let you have the wo'k the way you want, I don't think it's fair, and you ought to have the money for it just the same.”

      Clementina shook her head smiling. “I don't believe motha would like to have me take it.”

      “Oh, now, pshaw!” said Mrs. Lander, inadequately. “I want you should take this for youaself; and if you don't want to buy anything to wea', you can get something to fix your room up with. Don't you be afraid of robbin' us. Land! We got moa money! Now you take this.”

      Mrs. Lander reached the money as far toward Clementina as she could and shook it in the vehemence of her desire.

      “Thank you, I couldn't take it,” Clementina persisted. “I'm afraid I must be going; I guess I must bid you good-mo'ning.”

      “Why, I believe the child's sca'ed of me! But you needn't be. Don't you suppose I know how you feel? You set down in that chai'a there, and I'll tell you how you feel. I guess we've been pooa, too—I don't mean anything that a'n't exactly right—and I guess I've had the same feelin's. You think it's demeanin' to you to take it. A'n't that it?” Clementina sank provisionally upon the edge of the chair. “Well, it did use to be so consid'ed. But it's all changed, nowadays. We travel pretty nee' the whole while, Mr. Lander and me, and we see folks everywhere, and it a'n't the custom to refuse any moa. Now, a'n't there any little thing for your own room, there in your nice new house? Or something your motha's got her heat set on? Or one of your brothas? My, if you don't have it, some one else will! Do take it!”

      The girl kept slipping toward the door. “I shouldn't know what to tell them, when I got home. They would think I must be—out of my senses.”

      “I guess you mean they'd think I was. Now, listen to me a minute!” Mrs. Lander persisted.

      “You just take this money, and when you get home, you tell your mother every word about it, and if she says, you bring it right straight back to me. Now, can't you do that?”

      “I don't know but I can,” Clementina faltered. “Well, then take it!” Mrs. Lander put the bills into her hand but she did not release her at once. She pulled Clementina down and herself up till she could lay her other arm on her neck. “I want you should let me kiss you. Will you?”

      “Why, certainly,” said Clementina, and she kissed the old woman.

      “You tell your mother I'm comin' to see her before I go; and I guess,” said Mrs. Lander in instant expression of the idea that came into her mind, “we shall be goin' pretty soon, now.”

      “Yes'm,” said Clementina.

      She went out, and shortly after Lander came in with a sort of hopeful apathy in his face.

      Mrs. Lander turned her head on her pillow, and so confronted him. “Albe't, what made you want me to see that child?”

      Lander must have perceived that his wife meant business, and he came to it at once. “I thought you might take a fancy to her, and get her to come and live with us.”

      “Yes?”

      “We're both of us gettin' pretty well on, and you'd ought to have somebody to look after you if—I'm not around. You want somebody that can do for you; and keep you company, and read to you, and talk to you—well, moa like a daughta than a suvvant—somebody that you'd get attached to, maybe—”

      “And don't you see,” Mrs. Lander broke out severely upon him, “what a ca'e that would be? Why, it's got so already that I can't help thinkin' about her the whole while, and if I got attached to her I'd have her on my mind day and night, and the moa she done for me the more I should be tewin' around to do for her. I shouldn't have any peace of my life any moa. Can't you see that?”

      “I guess if you see it, I don't need to,” said Lander.

      “Well, then, I want you shouldn't eva mention her to me again. I've had the greatest escape! But I've got her off home, and I've give her money enough! had a time with her about it—so that they won't feel as if we'd made 'em trouble for nothing, and now I neva want to hear of her again. I don't want we should stay here a great while longer; I shall be frettin' if I'm in reach of her, and I shan't get any good of the ai'a. Will you promise?”

      “Yes.”

      “Well, then!” Mrs. Lander turned her face upon the pillow again in the dramatization of her exhaustion; but she was not so far gone that she was insensible to the possible interest that a light rap at the door suggested. She once more twisted her head in that direction and called, “Come in!”

      The door opened and Clementina came in. She advanced to the bedside smiling joyously, and put the money Mrs. Lander had given her down upon the counterpane.

      “Why, you haven't been home, child?”

      “No'm,” said Clementina, breathlessly. “But I couldn't take it. I knew they wouldn't want me to, and I thought you'd like it better if I just brought it back myself. Good-mo'ning.” She slipped out of the door. Mrs. Lander swept the bank-notes from the coverlet and pulled it over her head, and sent from beneath it a stifled wail. “Now we got to go! And it's all youa fault, Albe't.”

      Lander took the money from the floor, and smoothed each bill out, and then laid them in a neat pile on the corner of the bureau. He sighed profoundly but left the room without an effort to justify himself.

      V.

      The Landers had been gone a week before Clementina's mother decided that she could spare her to Mrs. Atwell for a while. It was established that she was not to serve either in the dining-room or the carving room; she was not to wash dishes or to do any part of the chamber work, but to carry messages and orders for the landlady, and to save her steps, when she wished to see the head-waiter, or the head-cook; or to make an excuse or a promise to some of the lady-boarders; or to send word to Mr. Atwell about the buying, or to communicate with the clerk about rooms taken or left.

      She had a good deal of dignity of her own and such a gravity in the discharge of her duties that the chef, who was a middle-aged Yankee with grown girls of his own, liked to pretend that it was Mrs. Atwell herself who was talking with him, and to discover just as she left him that it was Clementina. He called her the Boss when he spoke of her to others in her hearing, and he addressed her as Boss when he feigned to find that it was not Mrs. Atwell. She did not mind that in him, and let the chef have his joke as if it were not one. But one day when the clerk called her Boss she merely looked at him without speaking, and made him feel that he had taken a liberty which he must not repeat. He was a young man who much preferred a state of self-satisfaction to humiliation of any sort, and after he had endured Clementina's gaze as long as he could, he said, “Perhaps you don't allow anybody but the chef to call you that?”

      She did not answer, but repeated the message Mrs. Atwell had given her for him, and went away.