Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
It appeared that Dulcie was not pleased with anything or anybody.
Especially when she was having one of her "spells." Mrs. Seeley rocked
violently as she recounted to her new seamstress her trials with
Dulcie.
"She's a caution. In a way I do owe her a livin'. She's my husband's
niece I know, that is by his first wife y'understand. She wasn't even
exactly his niece. But on account of his havin' to use Dulcie's money
in his plumbin' business we agreed to give her her livin'. Al kept her
in a nart school, a swell art school when we was first married. That
was a mistake. I said to him many a time to mark-my-words, it would be
a mistake. Of course when he died I didn't feel it was up to me to
keep her in a nart school. So I took her right into the family, same's
I'd take you or anybody. But it's no use. All she does is mope. Even
Mr. Perry can't cheer her up, though he tries.
"Says he to her only last night, 'Cheer up, I'll take you a nice ride
down to the morgue.' I thought everybody'd die laughing to hear him
but she just got up and stalked out of the dining-room like somebody
had insulted her. And I can't get a peep out of her today. Just this
noon I says to her, pleasant enough, because I was short of help,
wouldn't she come down and wait on table, but would she?" demanded
Mrs. Seeley bitterly, "She would not. She said she was no scullery
maid and slammed the door in my face and went back to her wet mud--"
"Oh, is she building a garden?" asked Felice eagerly.
"Nothing so useful as a garden," snorted Mrs. Seeley, "it's clay she's
fussin' with, thinkin' she's going to be able to make statues some
day. Statues! What kind of a job is that nowadays! Artist jobs is
impractical. Dulcie is awful impractical. I offered to send her to
business college, she could make a good living, but no, she's gotta
make statues! With the parks all full of 'em now and that kind of
thing going out of style for parlors! I put both my Rogers groups
upstairs in the attic when I bought the phonograph--there's no style
to a statue any more. And she wants to learn to make 'em!"
"But I should think," breathed the seamstress her eyes glowing as she
lifted them from her work, "that you'd be proud to have her want to
try to make something."
What Mrs. Seeley thought expressed itself in the bang of the door as
she left to answer a strident summons below stairs. But after she had
gone Felice became aware of continued sobbing in the next room, a
sobbing as penetrating, for all it was not so loud, as that of the
noisy Italian baby at home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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