Star-Dust | Page 8

sleeping
boarding house roused Lilly to a sitting posture on her little cot drawn
across the baseboard of her parents' bed.
"Mamma! Papa! What was that?"
There were immediate voices and running up and down stairs and more
cries that beat the air and Mrs. Becker already up and clamoring into
her kimono.
"Sh-h-h, Lilly! Go back to sleep. It is nothing but Mrs. Kemble not
feeling very well. I'll run upstairs a minute, Ben. See that Lilly goes
back to sleep."
Until the break of day Lilly lay tense there on her little cot, toes curled
in, and still her mother did not return. Time and time again the moans
rose to shrieks of dreadful supplication that set her to trembling so that
her cot rattled against the baseboard.
"Kill me! God! Put me out of it! Please! I can't suffer any more! Kill
me, God! Kill me!"
"Papa, I--I'm scared."
"Go to sleep, Lilly," said her father from the pool of darkness, his voice
rather thin and sick. "Go to sleep now, like a good girl."

In a little area of quiet that ensued, she did drop healthily off, wakening
to the warmth of sunshine, her father already departed, her mother
rocking and sewing beside the window.
"Mamma, why didn't you wake me? I'll be late to school."
"You won't if you hurry and--and, Lilly, what do you think?"
"What, mamma?"
"The stork brought Flora and Roy the dearest little baby sister last night.
They're going to call her Evelyn. That's why Roy and Flora went to
spend the week with their Aunt Emma, so they wouldn't frighten the
stork away when he flew in with it. In a few days you can go up and
see it. Isn't that nice, Lilly?"
Still tousled with sleep, but the red rising up out of the yoke of her
nightgown, Lilly answered, with averted face, "Yes, mamma."
CHAPTER V
This episode marked the beginning of what was to be a three years'
refrain.
"Ben, we must go housekeeping. It's an outrage to board, with a girl
Lilly's age. Not as much as a parlor for her to bring her friends, and a
great big girl like her without a room to herself! It's not even delicate."
"Well, Carrie, I'm willing."
"I know, until the time comes. I don't forget so easily the way you
sighed all night in your sleep that time I came near renting the house on
Delmar Avenue. Where is the money coming from! The minute that old
business down there earns a penny, right back into it go the earnings,
instead of drawing out a few dollars for the comfort of his family, like
any other man would."
"But, Carrie--"

"There is not another woman in the world would stand for it but me. A
woman that could enjoy a little home of her own as much as I! What do
I get out of it, I'd like to know! Stint. Stint. Stint. Shove it all back into
that old rope-and-twine business down there that doesn't show a cent of
capital when you take stock except in rope, rope, rope, until I'd like to
hang myself with some of it."
"Now, little woman, you got up on the wrong side of bed this morning.
Just hold your horses. These are tight times, I admit, but we have our
health--"
"I've heard that since I'm married. Health! Suppose we have got our
health. We can't thank the business for that."
"Lilly, your mother certainly got up on the wrong side of bed this
morning, didn't she?"
"Well, it's right discouraging, if you ask me."
"You're all right, little woman."
"Yes, I know," trying not to smile, "I'm all right when it don't cost
nothing and when it comes to the dirty work of trying to make two ends
meet."
"You're certainly a splendid manager. No one can take that away from
you."
"Well, I wish you would both appreciate it a little more."
"We do appreciate it, don't we, Lilly?"
"Yes, papa."
Her second year in High School, Lilly was kept out for five weeks by
an attack of typhoid fever.
An aversion for physical shortcoming, from her mother's occasional
headaches to the mortally afflicted Mr. Hazzard with the great chronic

sore crisscrossed with court plaster at the end of one of his eyes,
amounted in Lilly to something actually Indian.
"Oh, mamma, if I had a headache, I wouldn't always be talking about it.
People aren't interested."
"I'm going to tell your father when he comes home to-night what a
sympathetic daughter I have. If ever I fall sick the City Hospital will be
the place for me. When I see the way that Flora Kemble carries her
mother around and the way my own daughter sympathizes with me.