to do any work to-day, Sheila?" she asked in her voice of harsh,
monotonous accents. "Here it's nine o'clock and I ain't been able to do a
stroke to Babe's dress. I dunno what you was designed for in this
house--an ornament on the parlor mantel, I guess."

Sheila's heart suffered one of the terrible swift enlargements of angry
youth. It seemed to fill her chest and stop her breath, forcing water
into her eyes. She could not speak, went quickly up and took the kettle
from "Momma's" red hand.

The table at which dish-washing was done, was inconveniently high. When
the big dishpan with its piled dishes topped it, Sheila's arms and back
were strained over her work. She usually pulled up a box on which she
stood, but now she went to work blindly, her teeth clenched, her flexible
red lips set close to cover them. The Celtic fire of her Irish blood gave
her eyes a sort of phosphorescent glitter. "Momma" looked at her.

"Don't show temper!" she said. "What were you doin'? Upstairs work?"

"I was writing a letter," said Sheila in a low voice, beginning to wash
the plates and shrinking at the pain of scalding water.

"Hmp! Writing letters at this hour! One of your friends back East? I
thought it was about time somebody was looking you up. What do your
acquaintance think of you comin' West with Sylly?"

Now that she was at liberty to put a "stroke" of work; on Babe's dress,
"Momma" seemed in no particular hurry to do so. She stood in the middle
of the kitchen wrapping her great bony arms in her checked apron and
staring at Sheila. Her eyes were like Girlie's turned to stone, as blank