ried to do Mrs. Mundy's work, but my first
breakfast was not an artistic product. I shall never know how to cook.
I don't want to know how. I don't like to cook. There were many other
things I could do, however, and though Mrs. Mundy wept, being weak from
nausea, at my refusal to leave undone the usual cleaning, I did it with
pride and delight in the realization that, notwithstanding little
practice, I could do it very well. I am a perfect dish-washer, and I
can make up beds as well as a trained nurse.

Mrs. Mundy is much better to-day and to-morrow she will be up. Three
days in bed is for her an unusual and depressing experience, and her
sunny spirit drooped under the combined effects of over-indulgence in
certain delectable dishes, and inability to do her usual work.

"It don't make any difference how much character a person's got, it's
gone when sick-stomach is a-wrenching of 'em." Mrs. Mundy groaned
feebly. "I 'ain't had a spell like this since Bettina was a baby. Pig
feet did it. When they're fried in batter I'm worse than the thing I'm
eating. I et three, and I never can eat more than two. And to think
you had to do everything for Lillie Pierce, to get her off in time!
The doctor says she can't live many months. Outside the doctor, and
Nurse White and Mr. Guard, don't anybody know she's been here. I
reckon it ain't necessary to mention it. People are so--"

"People-ish! They love to stick pins in other people! It's
tyranny--the fear of what people will think about us, say about us, do
about us! I'm going to give myself a present when I get like Mr. Guard
and can tell some people to go--go anywhere they please, if it's where
I won't meet them. Are you all right now and ready for your nap?"

Mrs. Mundy nodded, looked at me with something of anxiety in her eyes
as I straightened the counterpane of her spotless bed; but she said
nothing more, and, lowering the shades at the windows lest the sunlight
bother her, I went out of the room and left her to go asleep.

I am glad of the much work of these past few days. It has kept me from
thinking too greatly of what Selwyn told me of Harrie, of the girl to
whom he is engaged, and of the little cashier-girl whose terror-filled
face is ever with me. It has kept me, also, from dwelling too
constantly on the message Lillie Pierce sent by me to the women of
clean and happy worlds. For herself there was no plea for pity or for
pardon, no effort at pallia