The floor was untidy, the sink full of dirty dishes, and the stove a variegated thing of gray and dull red. At the table, head bowed on outstretched arms, was Kate Merton, twenty-one, discouraged, and sole mistress of the kitchen in which she sat. The pleasant-faced, slender little woman in the doorway paused irresolutely on the threshold, then walked with a brisk step into the room.
"Is the water hot?" she asked cheerily.
The girl at the table came instantly to her feet.
"Aunt Ellen!" she cried, aghast.
"Oh, yes, it's lovely," murmured the lady, peering into the copper boiler on the stove.
"But, auntie, you—I"—the girl paused helplessly.
"Let's see, are these the wipers?" pursued Mrs. Howland, her hand on one of the towels hanging behind the stove.
Kate's face hardened.
"Thank you, Aunt Ellen. You are very kind, but I can do quite well by myself. You will please go into the living-room. I don't allow company to do kitchen work."
"Of course not!" acquiesced Mrs. Howland imperturbably. "But your father's sister is n't company, you know. Let's see, you put your clean dishes here?"
"But, Aunt Ellen, you must n't," protested Kate. "At home you do nothing—nothing all day." A curious expression came into Mrs. Howland's face, but Kate Merton did not seem to notice. "You have servants to do everything, even to dressing you. No, you can't wipe my dishes."
For a long minute there was silence in the kitchen. Mrs. Howland, wiper in hand, stood looking out the window. Her lips parted, then closed again. When she finally turned and spoke, the old smile had come back to her face.
"Then if that is the case, it will be all the more change for me to do something," she said pleasantly. "I want to do them, Kate. It will be a pleasure to me."
"Pleasure!"
Mrs. Howland's clear laugh rang through the kitchen at the scorn expressed in the one word.
"And is it so bad as that?" she demanded merrily.
"Worse!" snapped Kate. "I simply loathe dishes!" But a shamed smile came to her lips, and she got the pans and water, making no further objection.
"I like pretty dishes," observed Mrs. Howland, after a time, breaking a long silence. "There's a certain satisfaction in restoring them to their shelves in all their dainty, polished beauty."
"I should like them just as well if they always stayed there, and did n't come down to get all crumbs and grease in the sink," returned the other tartly.
"Oh, of course," agreed Mrs. Howland, with a smile; "but, as long as they don't, why, we might as well take what satisfaction there is in putting them in shape again."
"Don't see it—the satisfaction," retorted Kate, and her aunt dropped the subject where it was.
The dishes finished and the kitchen put to rights, the two women started for the chambers and the bed-making. Kate's protests were airily waved aside by the energetic little woman who promptly went to pillow-beating and mattress-turning.
"How fresh and sweet the air smells!" cried Mrs. Howland, sniffing at the open window.
"Lilacs," explained Kate concisely.
"Hm-m—lovely!"
"Think so? I don't care for the odor myself," rejoined Kate.
The other shot a quick look from under lowered lids. Kate's face expressed mere indifference. The girl evidently had not meant to be rude.
"You don't like them?" cried Mrs. Howland. "Oh, I do! My dear, you don't half appreciate what it is to have such air to breathe. Only think, if you were shut up in a brick house on a narrow street as I am!"
"Think!" retorted Kate, with sudden heat. "I'd like to do something besides 'think'! I'd like to try it!"
"You mean you'd like to leave here?—to go to the city?"
"I do, certainly. Aunt Ellen, I'm simply sick of chicken-feeding and meal-getting. Why, if it was n't for keeping house for father I'd have been off to New York or Boston years ago!"
"But your home—your friends!"
"Commonplace—uninteresting!" declared Kate, disposing of both with a wave of her two hands. "The one means endless sweeping and baking; the other means sewing societies, and silly gossip over clothes, beaux, and crops."
Mrs. Howland laughed, though she sobered instantly.
"But there must be something, some one that you enjoy," she suggested.
Kate shook her head wearily.
"Not a thing, not a person," she replied; adding with a whimsical twinkle, "they're all like the dishes, Aunt Ellen,—bound to accumulate crumbs and scraps, and do nothing but clutter up."