"It's all very well for you to talk, spit-cat," Gladys retorted. "All you've got to do is to play with ribbons as if you were dressing a doll. If you had to run like Pansy every time some stuck-up thing calls, '_Ca-ash!_'--"
Gussie undulated her person and her outstretched arms in sheer joy of the dancing step as she strutted up and down.
"That's right, old girl. Blame it on me. I'm always the one that's in the wrong in this house. If Master Teddy lets a glass fall and breaks it, as he did last night, I pushed it out of his hand on purpose, though I'm in the next room. All the same, I say, 'Buck up,' and I don't care who says different. Sniffing won't cure your feet or give you a brother like Fred Inglis who can pay for a woman to do all the heavy work, and his mother hardly lifting a hand."
Teddy passed on to the kitchen to see if his mother was there.
She was seated at a table with a ham bone before her, and from it was paring the last rags of the meat. He tried to take his old-time tone of gayety.
"Hello, ma! At it again? What are you giving us for supper? Something good, I'll bet."
Lizzie went on working without lifting her eyes. She didn't even smile. Teddy sensed something new in the way of care, as Pansy had sensed it in him. He stood at a little distance, waiting for the look that had never failed to welcome him, but which this time didn't come.
"What's the matter, ma? Has anything gone wrong?"
Putting down the ham, Lizzie raised her eyes, though with no light in them.
"It's nothing so very wrong, dear, but I haven't told your sisters because it's no use to worry them if--"
She told him. If it was necessary to go without a hot meal between Wednesday and Saturday, of course it could be done; but even on Saturday the gas people would demand fifteen dollars on account before the gas would be turned on again. There were just two possibilities: The father might come home with the news that he had found a job, or Teddy might have--she didn't believe it, but he had talked of saving for a new suit of clothes--Teddy might have fifteen dollars laid away.
He turned his back and walked out of the kitchen. He did it so significantly that it seemed to the mother there could be only one meaning to the act. He had saved the money and resented being robbed of it. She knew he was something of a coxcomb, and had always been proud that he could look so neat. He had only two suits, a common one and a best one, but even the common one was as brushed and pressed and stylish as if he had a valet. Nevertheless, his great activity and his love of rough-and-tumble skylarking made him hard on clothes in the sense of wear, and the common one was growing shiny at the seams and thin where there was most attrition. A new suit was an urgent necessity; so that if he had a few dollars put away toward getting it, it would be no wonder if it hurt him to be asked to give them up.