Part 6 (2/2)
One day, after ten hours of the severest toil, Star came home, with the little bundle of her personal effects under her arm. It was on that memorable day in November when the heavens seemed to have bursted their flood gates and let out a deluge to come down in gimlets to pierce the fog and smoke with its weird pattering. Without cloak, or coat, or protection of any kind, Star waded through the sodden streets, arriving at the door of her home as wet as a drowning rat. Entering, she deposited her bundle on the only table in the house, and took up a position close to a cast iron stove that was about as cheerless in its warmth as the evening itself. She was so thoroughly soaked that every lineament of her form could be seen through the thin garment that clung to her body as closely as paper on a wall.
”Mother,” said Star, as that lean creature came indolently into the room, ”I have quit my job.”
”You have?” answered the mother, about as carelessly as if she were talking gossip over the back fence.
”Yes, mother, I have quit.”
”Very well, I've lots to do here; I reckon you can keep busy,” said the mother, as if the future had been provided with all the necessaries of life.
Star left her mother suckling a child by the stove, and proceeded to her dark and shabbily furnished room for a change of clothing. Presently she returned looking less distressful. Then she bathed her face in a water bucket that stood on a box by a besmoked window, following with the combing of her long dark hair. After which, she rolled her hair into a knot at the back of her head, looked into a crooked mirror, dampened her fingers on her tongue and touched her eyebrows, then set to work to cook the evening meal for the brats caterwauling around like so many wild-cats.
Kate Barton gave no concern about Star's future. She asked no questions as to why she quit her work as scrub-woman at the lodging house. She said nothing that would leave the least impression as to what she thought about providing for the family. Deplorable mortal!
”Mother,” said Star, after awhile, ”I am going away tomorrow to look for a new place.”
”It makes no difference, Star,” was the response of the mother. ”I can use you here.”
”How will we live, if I don't work, mother?”
”As we have always lived, s'pose.”
”And that has been poorly, mother.”
”Yes.”
”Don't you want me to go away, mother?”
”It makes no difference, s'pose,” answered the mother. ”I've put up with it this long, s'pose I can put up with it the rest of my days.”
”Mother,” said Star, whose love for her mother was of the undemonstrative kind, the kind born of instinct, and is taken for granted among the very poor; ”mother, I am going to the East End tomorrow to look for a job as a domestic in a rich man's home.”
”Yes,” replied the mother.
”A woman came to me today and told me to go to a certain house, in the East End, where I could get work at six dollars a week, and board thrown in.”
”Yes, Star,” returned the mother, now showing a little more interest in the conversation than she had shown in any thing before--unless it was, perhaps, her drunken husband.
”Mother?”
”Yes, Star.”
”That is twenty-four dollars a month; that will keep me in clothing, and plenty for the children to eat.”
”Yes, Star,” said the mother, as she rose from her chair, with the suckling still hanging to her breast, and walked across the floor, for no purpose whatever, other than that perhaps the performance might dissolve her cold brooding into a semblance of interest in her material welfare. Then she sat down again and rocked to and fro with the rockerless chair, as a jolting dose of soothing syrup for the pain that had suddenly twisted the child's mouth into a howling breadth.
”And mother,” continued Star, ”the woman gave me the address of a rich family that wants a maid for a young lady, or a cook, or something else, I forget which.”
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