“Treat me nice, Miss Mandy Jane,
 Treat me nice. 
 Don’t you know I’se not to blame,
 Lovers all act just the same,
 Treat me nice...”

Girlie’s fingers tightened on the doorknob.

“What do you want, Sheila?” she asked, and into the slow, gentle tones of her voice something had crept, something sinuous and subtle, something that slid into the world with Lilith for the eternal torment of earth’s daughters.

“I want to send this note to your brother,” said Sheila with the simplicity of the aristocrat.  “Is that Mr. Greely?  Is he going past the hotel?”

She took a step toward Jim, but Girlie held out her soft long hand.

“Give it to me.  I’ll ask him.”

Sheila surrendered the note.

“You’d better get back to the dishes,” said Girlie over her shoulder.  “Momma’s kind of rushed this morning.  She’s helping Babe with her party dress.  I wouldn’t ‘a’ put in my time writing notes to Dickie to-day if I’d ‘a’ been you.  Sort of risky.”

She slid in through the jealous door and Sheila hurried along the hall to the kitchen where there was an angry clash and clack of crockery.

The kitchen was furnished almost entirely with blue-flowered oilcloth; the tables were covered with it, the floor was covered with it, the shelves were draped in it.  Cold struck up through the shining, clammy surface underfoot so that while Sheila’s face burned from the heat of the stove her feet were icy.  The back door was warped and let in a current of frosty air over its sill, a draught that circled her ankles like cold metal.  On the table in the middle of the room, “Momma” had placed an enormous tin dish-pan piled high with dirty dishes, over which she was pouring the contents of the kettle.  Steam rose in clouds, half-veiling her big, fierce face which, seen through holes in the vapor, was like that of a handsome, vulgar witch.

Through the steam she shot at Sheila a cruel look.  “Aren’t you planning to do any work to-day, Sheila?” she asked in her voice of harsh, monotonous accents.  “Here it’s nine o’clock and I ain’t been able to do a stroke to Babe’s dress.  I dunno what you was designed for in this house—­an ornament on the parlor mantel, I guess.”

Sheila’s heart suffered one of the terrible swift enlargements of angry youth.  It seemed to fill her chest and stop her breath, forcing water into her eyes.  She could not speak, went quickly up and took the kettle from “Momma’s” red hand.

The table at which dish-washing was done, was inconveniently high.  When the big dishpan with its piled dishes topped it, Sheila’s arms and back were strained over her work.  She usually pulled up a box on which she stood, but now she went to work blindly, her teeth clenched, her flexible red lips set close to cover them.  The Celtic fire of her Irish blood gave her eyes a sort of phosphorescent glitter.  “Momma” looked at her.

“Don’t show temper!” she said.  “What were you doin’?  Upstairs work?”