Miss Theodosias Heartstrings | Page 6

Theodosia said, forgetful of the boy's affliction. She put the money into the hard little palm of Carruthers and watched him scamper home with it. Miss Theodosia looked happy. She felt pleasant little tweaks at her heartstrings as if small grimy hands were ringing them, playing a tender little tune. Scorched, blundering young hands--Stefana's. The little tune rang plaintive in her ears. She had a vision of Stefana toiling over the ironing of her dresses and going to bed exhausted, when the toil was over. Miss Theodosia's eyes followed Carruther's retreating little figure till it reached the House of Little Children and disappeared from view. What had she, Theodosia Baxter, to do with houses of little children? Since when had they possessed attractions for her--held her tender, brooding gaze? What was she doing here now, gazing? Theodosia Baxter!
Stefana had folded the dresses painstakingly in separate newspaper bundles and stacked them on Carruther's outstretched arms. They were stacked now on Miss Theodosia's porch. She picked them up and turned with them into the house.
"I'll unfold them," she thought, "and shake them out. I must tell her to send them home without folding next time--or I can go and get them myself."
Unpinning Stefana's many pins, she lifted out one of the dresses. It creaked starchily under her hands; it opened out before Miss Theodosia's horrified vision. She uttered a groan.
Where, now, was that tender little heart-string tune?
CHAPTER II
Miss Theodosia saw pink. Near-anger surged up within her at this ruinous, this piteous result of Stefana's toil. The result dangled creaksomely from her hands, revealing new wrinkles and smooches and leprous patches of starch at every motion. What was in this bundle would be in the rest--there was no hope.
In Theodosia Baxter's little girlhood, she had played there were two "'Dosies," a good one and a bad one. The Good 'Dosie was often away from home, but was sometimes apt to appear at unexpected moments, to the embarrassment of the Bad 'Dosie. Stamp her foot as she would, Bad 'Dosie could not always drive the unwelcome intruder away.
"I don't like her!" the small sinner had once been heard to say. "She--she p'eaches at me!"
The Good 'Dosie was preaching now.
"Wait! Count ten!" she preached. "Don't get any angrier, or you'll see red instead of pink. Think of that poor child's burned thumbs--think of her having to take to her bed when she got through--"
"I don't wonder!" snapped Bad 'Dosie.
"Wait--wait! Aren't you going to be good? Do you remember what you used to do, to help out? Well?"
Miss Theodosia dropped the starchy mass on top of the other newspaper bundles and rather suddenly sat down in a chair. She saw a little child, preached to and penitent, on her knees, with folded hands, saying "Now I lame me down to sleep."
It was very still in the room. Miss Theodosia's eyes closed and opened again. It was as if she had said "Now I lame me." A little smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. She no longer saw even pink.
She got up briskly and began turning back her cuffs. First, she would build the kitchen fire; it must roar and snap, with all the work it had to do to-night. She would heat a lot of water, for only boiling water could take out Stefana's awful starch. While the water was heating, she would eat her supper.
"A good, big supper, it will have to be," smiled this gentled Miss Theodosia. "I've got to get up my strength! No tea-and-toast-and-jam supper to-night." She heated her gridiron smoking hot and broiled a bit of steak. She tossed together little feathery biscuit and made coffee, fragrant and strong. Momently, Miss Theodosia's strength "got up." She moved about the kitchen briskly--when had she launched out upon a night's work like this? Adventure!--call it adventure.
Work to Miss Theodosia had always meant something that other people did,--the Stefanas and their mothers and brothers and fathers. What she herself did, a gentle, dilatory playing at work, hardly merited the name. A bit of dusting, tea-and-toasting, making her own bed, cooking for sheer love of cooking, what did they count in Miss Theodosia's summing up of tasks?
Always there had been some one to do her heavy things. She had put her washings out and taken her dinners in; three times a week she was swept and scrubbed and made immaculate.
But to-night--to-night was different. This was to be no playing at work. Miss Theodosia rose to the occasion gallantly--indeed, exultantly. Thrills of enthusiasm ran up, ran down her spine. She prepared for a night of it.
The dresses immersed in steaming hot water and her supper eaten, she stretched drying-lines, with considerable difficulty, from corner to corner of her kitchen, prepared an ironing-board, and got out long-idle irons. At eight o'clock she stopped for breath.