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Addix were sitting. Maria regarded her father with a sort of contemptuous wonder, tinctured with unwilling admiration. Her father, on his return from his evenings spent with Miss Ida Slome, looked always years younger than Maria had ever seen him. There was the humidity of youth in his eyes, the flush of youth on his cheeks, the triumph of youth in his expression.
It thus happened that every evening little Maria Edgham sat guarded, as it were, by Mrs. Addix. Mrs. Addix was of the poor-white race, like the Manns in fact, she was distantly related to them. They were nearly all distantly related, which may have accounted for their partial degeneracy. Mrs. Addix, however, was a sort of anomaly.
She thought of how much her mother would have liked it, and how she had gone without, and not made any complaint about her shabby old furnishings, which had that very day been sold to Mrs. Addix for an offset to her wages, and which Maria had seen carried away. She thought about it all, and a red flush deepened on her cheeks, and her blue eyes blazed. For the time she was abnormal.
She made some mistakes, and whenever she did she realized with a sort of wicked glee that the thing would not be perfect, and she never tried to rectify them. Finally, Maria laid her work softly on the table, beside which she was sitting. She glanced at Mrs. Addix, whose heavy, measured breathing filled the room, then she arose. She took the lamp from the table, and tiptoed out.
"Has she been asleep ever since I went?" inquired Harry, in a whisper. "Yes, sir." "Poor little girl. Well, it will be livelier by-and-by for you. We'll have company, and more going on." Harry then went close to Mrs. Addix, sitting with her head resting on her shoulder, still snoring with those puffs of heavy breath. "Mrs. Addix," he said. Mrs. Addix did not stir; she continued to snore. "Mrs.
Addix!" repeated Harry, in a louder tone, but still the sleeping woman did not stir. "Good Lord, what a sleeper!" said Harry, still aloud. Then he shook her violently by the shoulder. "Come, Mrs. Addix," said he, in a shout; "I've got home, and I guess you'll want to be going yourself." Mrs. Addix moved languidly, and glanced up with a narrow slit of eye, as dull as if she had been drugged.
When he came to-night, he looked at the sleeping Mrs. Addix, and at Maria, taking painful stitches in her dresser cover, at first with a radiant smile, then with the deepest pity. "Poor little soul," he said. "You have had a long evening to yourself, haven't you?" "I don't mind," replied Maria. She was thinking of the torn wall-paper, and she did not look her father fully in the eyes.
I suppose you will get Mrs. Addix?" "They tell me she is about the best woman for house-cleaning," said Harry, rather helplessly. He was so unaccustomed to even giving a thought to household details, that he had a vague sense of self-pity because he was now obliged to do so. His lost Abby occasionally, he believed, had employed this Mrs. Addix, but she had never troubled him about it.
That evening, after her father had gone, and she sat there with the sleeping Mrs. Addix, a sort of frenzy seized her, or, rather, she worked herself up to it. She thought of what her mother would have said to that beautiful new paper, and furniture, and bay-window. Her mother also had liked pink.
"Well," said Harry, easily, "your paper will do very well, I guess, for a while longer; but father will have your room fixed up another year. You needn't think you are going to be slighted." That night, Maria and Mrs. Addix sat in Maria's room. The parlor was in confusion, and so was the dining-room and the guest-chamber; indeed, the house was at that time in the height of its repairs.
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