The Professors House | Page 4

quickly. "What are you doing?"
She laughed. "Oh, I'm not going to carry them through the street, Professor! The grocery
boy is downstairs with his cart, to wheel them over."
"Wheel them over?"
"Why, yes, to the new house, Professor. I've come a week before my regular time, to
make curtains and hem linen for Mrs. St. Peter. I'll take everything over this morning
except the sewing- machine -- that's too heavy for the cart, so the boy will come back for
it with the delivery wagon. Would you just open the door for me, please?"
"No, I won't! Not at all. You don't need her to make curtains. I can't have this room
changed if I'm going to work here. He can take the sewing- machine -- yes. But put her
back on the chest where she belongs, please. She does very well there." St. Peter had got
to the door, and stood with his back against it.
Augusta rested her burden on the edge of the chest.
"But next week I'll be working on Mrs. St. Peter's clothes, and I'll need the forms. As the
boy's here, he'll just wheel them over," she said soothingly.
"I'm damned if he will! They shan't be wheeled. They stay right there in their own place.
You shan't take away my ladies. I never heard of such a thing!"
Augusta was vexed with him now, and a little ashamed of him. "But, Professor, I can't
work without my forms. They've been in your way all these years, and you've always
complained of them, so don't be contrary, sir."
"I never complained, Augusta. Perhaps of certain disappointments they recalled, or of

cruel biological necessities they imply -- but of them individually, never! Go and buy
some new ones for your airy atelier, as many as you wish -- I'm said to be rich now, am I
not? -- Go buy, but you can't have my women. That's final."
Augusta looked down her nose as she did at church when the dark sins were mentioned.
"Professor," she said severely, "I think this time you are carrying a joke too far. You
never used to." From the tilt of her chin he saw that she felt the presence of some
improper suggestion.
"No matter what you think, you can't have them." They considered, both were in earnest
now. Augusta was first to break the defiant silence.
"I suppose I am to be allowed to take my patterns?"
"Your patterns? Oh, yes, the cut-out things you keep in the couch with my old note-books?
Certainly, you can have them. Let me lift it for you." He raised the hinged top of the
box-couch that stood against the wall, under the slope of the ceiling. At one end of the
upholstered box were piles of notebooks and bundles of manuscript tied up in square
packages with mason's cord. At the other end were many little rolls of patterns, cut out of
newspapers and tied with bits of ribbon, gingham, silk, georgette; notched charts which
followed the changing stature and figures of the Misses St. Peter from early childhood to
womanhood. In the middle of the box, patterns and manuscripts interpenetrated.
"I see we shall have some difficulty in separating our life work, Augusta. We've kept our
papers together a long while now."
"Yes, Professor. When I first came to sew for Mrs. St. Peter, I never thought I should
grow grey in her service."
He started. What other future could Augusta possibly have expected? This disclosure
amazed him.
"Well, well, we mustn't think mournfully of it, Augusta. Life doesn't turn out for any of
us as we plan." He stood and watched her large slow hands travel about among the little
packets, as she put them into his waste-basket to carry them down to the cart. He had
often wondered how she managed to sew with hands that folded and unfolded as rigidly
as umbrellas -- no light French touch about Augusta; when she sewed on a bow, it stayed
there. She herself was tall, large-boned, flat and stiff, with a plain, solid face, and brown
eyes not destitute of fun. As she knelt by the couch, sorting her patterns, he stood beside
her, his hand on the lid, though it would have stayed up unsupported. Her last remark had
troubled him.
"What a fine lot of hair you have, Augusta! You know I think it's rather nice, that grey
wave on each side. Gives it character. You'll never need any of this false hair that's in all
the shop windows."
"There's altogether too much of that, Professor. So many of my customers are using it
now -- ladies you wouldn't expect would. They say most of it was cut off the heads of

dead Chinamen. Really, it's got