These things she bore with
the wonderful patience or stoicism of her race. She bore, too, bad air,
long hours, and uncongenial toil, but she could not bring any
resignation to bear on the lovelessness of her life, the squalor, the
ugliness.

"I ain't puttin' up no kick," she would assure Miss Bailey, in her newly
acquired and strictly modern vernacular, "about doin' all the woik in
the store, an' in the back room too. Didn't I know I was comin' over to
cook an' sew an' see to everything for him? What gits on my noives is
his everlasting grouch."

"It must be hard," Miss Bailey acquiesced, "especially as you have no
one else, no friends."

Gertie shook her head. "Ain't got a friend in the world only you," said
she. "How could I have any one come to see me with him carryin' on like
he does? An' I can't get away from him. He paid my way over, an' if I
did git a job the Gerry Society would give me back to him."

"But you're nearly old enough now," Miss Bailey encouraged her, "to do
as you please, and you're getting on so nicely with your reading and
writing that you will be able to get a very good position."

"Not 'til he's dead," the girl answered. "I guess you wouldn't learn me
no more if you knew how often I wish he'd choke himself, or fall down
cellar, or go out an' git run over. But he don't never go out. He says
he's afraid something would happen to the store. But that's a pipe! What
bothers him is the cash he's got tucked around in crazy places. Every
once in a while I fall into some of it, and then he 'most has a fit
explaining how it's change a customer is comin' back for. Last year it
wasn't quite so bad. He went to night school one term. You would have
died laughing to see him all folded up at a kid's desk tryin' to write
in a copy book. They learned him to write three words that term, but
when he found out that he couldn't read them in print, it sort of
discouraged him, and he stayed home."

"It's awfully hard for you," Miss Bailey repeated, "but you mustn't let
yourself say such things or think such things--about his getting killed,
I mean--it's not"--she found herself on the verge of saying "Christian,"
but remembered that Gertie made no pretence to the Christian
virtues--"not loving," she ended, and felt that the meaning of the two
words was very much the same.

"Well, I don't love him," said Gertie shortly, "I hate him!"

"That's another thing you mustn't say."

"All right, I won't say it. I do it