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Read Ebook: The home-maker by Fisher Dorothy Canfield
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Ebook has 1014 lines and 73063 words, and 21 pages
Release date: November 16, 2023
Original publication: New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co, 1924
THE HOME-MAKER
THE SQUIRREL-CAGE A MONTESSORI MOTHER MOTHERS AND CHILDREN THE BENT TWIG THE REAL MOTIVE FELLOW CAPTAINS UNDERSTOOD BETSY HOME FIRES IN FRANCE THE DAY OF GLORY THE BRIMMING CUP ROUGH-HEWN RAW MATERIAL
THE HOME-MAKER
BY DOROTHY CANFIELD
NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
THE HOME-MAKER
PART ONE
She shook the surplus of water from her scrubbing-brush, sat back on her heels, sprinkled cleaning-powder on the bristles--the second can of cleaning-powder this month, and the price gone up so!--and setting her strong teeth hard, flew at the spots again, her whole body tense with determination.
A sober-faced little boy in clean gingham rompers, with a dingy Teddy-bear in his arms, appeared at the door of the dining-room behind her, looked in cautiously, surveyed his mother's quivering, energetic back for an instant, and retreated silently without being seen.
She stopped, breathless, dipped her hand into the pail of hot soapy water, and brought out a hemmed, substantial floor-cloth, clean and whole. When, with a quick twist, she had wrung this out, she wiped the suds from the floor and looked sharply at the place she had been scrubbing.
The grease spots still showed, implacably dark against the white wood about them.
Her face clouded, she gave a smothered exclamation and seized the scrubbing-brush again.
In the next room a bell tinkled. The telephone! It always rang when it would bother her most.
She dropped her brush, stood up with one powerful thrust of her body, and went to wipe her hands on the roller-towel which hung, smooth and well-ironed, by the sink.
The bell rang again. Exasperated by its unreasonableness, she darted across the dining-room and snatched the receiver from the hook.
"Yes, this is Mrs. Knapp."
.......
"Oh, it's you, Mattie."
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"Oh, all about as usual here, thank you. Helen has one of her awful colds, but not so I have to keep her at home. And Henry's upset again, that chronic trouble with his digestion. The doctor doesn't seem to do him any good."
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"No, my eczema is no worse. On my arm now."
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"No, it's nice of you to suggest it, but I couldn't manage it. It would just waste your time to come round this way and stop. It's simply out of the question for me to think of going."
.......
"Well, thank you just the same. I appreciate your thinking of me. I'm sure I hope you have a lovely time."
"Stephen!" She called quickly and stood listening for an answer, her fine dark brows drawn together tensely.
The house waited emptily with her for the answer which did not come.
"Stephen!" she shouted, turning so that her voice would carry up the stairs.
She was rarely quiet enough to hear that sound, but when it did come to her ears, it always said pressingly, "So much to do! So much to do! So much to do!"
She looked at it and frowned. Half-past two already! And that floor only half scrubbed. What possessed people to call you up on the telephone at all hours? Didn't anybody realize what she had to do!
"Stephen!" The thought of the cooling water raised the heat of her resentment against the child.
She looked hastily into the spotless bathroom, the bedroom where Stephen's smooth white cot stood by his parents' bed, into Henry's little dormer-windowed cubby-hole--there! Henry had left his shoes in the middle of the floor again!--into Helen's room where a great bias fold in the badly made bed deepened the line between her eyes.
Still no Stephen. It was too much. With all she had to do, slaving day and night to keep the house nice for them all who never thought of appreciating it, never any rest or change, her hair getting thinner all the time, simply coming out by handfuls, and she had had such beautiful hair, so many things to do this afternoon while Mattie was out, enjoying herself, riding in a new car, and now everything stopped because of this naughty trick of Stephen's of not answering.
"Stephen!" she screamed, her face darkly flushed. "Tell me where you are this minute!"
In that tiny house he must be quite within earshot.
But the tiny house sent back not the faintest murmur of response. The echo of her screaming voice died away to a dead silence that closed in on her menacingly and laid on her feverish, angry heart the cold touch of terror.
Suppose that Stephen were not hiding from her! Suppose he had stepped out into the yard a moment and had been carried away. There had been those rough-looking men loitering in the streets yesterday--tramps from the railroad yards.... Oh, and the railroad yards so close! Mrs. Elmore's little Harry killed there by a freight-train. Or the river! Standing there in the dark upper hall, she saw Stephen's little hands clutching wildly at nothing and going down under that dreadful, cold, brown water. Stephen, her baby, her darling, the strongest and brightest of them all, her favorite....
She flew down the stairs and out the front door into the icy February air, calling wildly: "Stephen! Stevie! Stevie, darling!"
But the dingy street was quite empty save for a grocer's wagon standing in front of one of the little clapboarded houses. She ran down to this and asked the boy driving it: "Have you seen Stephen since you turned into the street? You know, little Stephen Knapp?"
"No, I ain't seen him," said the boy, looking up and down the street with her.
A thin old woman came out on the front porch of the house next to the Knapp's.
"You haven't seen Stephen, have you, Mrs. Anderson?" called Stephen's mother.
Mrs. Knapp's anxious face reddened with resentment. She went back to her own house and shut the door behind her hard.
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