She got up again at six, and set to work cleaning her little flat from end to end, so that it should be ready for Mrs. Russell’s inspection. Angelica insisted upon helping her. "Oh, mommer, for Gawd’s sake! I won’t get tired, and I won’t get dirty. She won’t come before ten, anyway--prob’ly later. I bet she has her breakfast in bed!" "She must be a queer one," said Mrs. Kennedy, "from what you tell me." "A freak! I wish you could have seen her--with pants on and her hair coming down her back. And there’s something mean about her, too. I don’t like her--telling them all they’d get their turns, and then putting them out, that way. And look at what she’s paying me!" "Angie, if you’re going to work for her," said Mrs. Kennedy gravely, "you’d better hold your tongue about her. If you can take her money----” "I only wish I had a chance to take a little more of it! I don’t see how you’ll get along, mommer." "Oh, I’ll manage," said her mother. She might have mentioned that she had supported her child for many, many years, and that even after Angelica had become a wage-earner she had taken very little of the girl’s money--only what had to be used to conform to Angie’s ever more and more exacting standards. II At ten o’clock Mrs. Russell hadn’t come yet, and Mrs. Kennedy couldn’t wait any longer. She was obliged to go out and scrub the halls. She had her best black silk blouse on, too, and she was dreadfully nervous about splashing. Every half-hour or so she ran down-stairs to her child, to see if the lady hadn’t come yet, and found Angelica scornfully waiting, reading a magazine. At one o’clock they sat down in the kitchen to a hurried meal of tea and bread, ready to hide all traces of it at the first sound of the door-bell. "I promised Mrs. Schell I’d do her kitchen floor this afternoon," said Mrs. Kennedy, with an anxious frown. "What do you want me to do about it, Angie?" "Go ahead! If she comes, I’ll run up and get you." She spent a miserable afternoon. She scrubbed with conscientious vigour, but with an absent mind. She thought the same thoughts over and over--first, how disappointed Angie would be if the lady never came; then that perhaps, after all, she wasn’t going to lose her. "Maybe we’ll have supper together again this very night!" she would think hopefully. Upon the heels of her hope came the certainty that if Angelica didn’t go away now, she would later. It was sure to come; no chance whatever that such a girl would stop there, underground, with her. When she came down again for the last time, at six o’clock, Angelica was in the little parlour, now black as the pit, and she was so very still that her mother felt disturbed. She was afraid that the poor, proud thing was grieving, and she went in to her, noiseless in her thin old shoes; but when she had lighted the lamp, she saw that Angelica was sleeping, stretched out limp and childish in the big rocking-chair.