Ceremony of the Innocent Read Free Page B

today?” asked the exasperated voice near the rusting wood stove.
    “He isn’t a fool, Aunt May,” said Ellen. She hesitated. “He talked about loving and trusting.”
    “Loving and trusting who?” asked May Watson, rattling a plate against the pump.
    “Why—everybody, I suppose, Auntie.”
    “More fool he. Never love or trust anybody, Ellen. I ought to know!” She fell into a short brooding. “Set out the plates, if it isn’t too much trouble.”
    Ellen set out two crocked ironware white plates on the table, and sniffed the boiling meal with anticipation. Again her exaltation came to her. “I guess there’s lot to love and trust in the world,” she said.
    “What?” Her aunt’s voice was now sullen and bitter. “Ellen, you are really not very bright, as I keep telling you.”
    The voice belonged to a little spare woman, flat as a shingle, with a tight thin face and hair the color of a gray squirrel. Her eyes were also that color, and disillusioned, her mouth a line in her colorless face, her nose beaked, and constantly wrinkling and twitching. Her calico dress, of gray and white, was fresh and ironed and she wore a white apron. She moved briskly; she was just forty and she was withered and wrinkled and dry as a dead weed. Her eyes sparkled only with anger and vexation, and they were sparkling now as she looked at her tall niece. Ellen could already sew carefully, and could keep house. Next year she would be put out to service, when she was fourteen, and no more nonsense about school. It was outrageous that “they” now kept young women in school until they were fourteen and would not permit them to work until they reached that age. Two or three dollars a month would come in very handy in that struggling household.
    “You’ll have to clean up the kitchen and wash the sheets and pillowcases, and sweep out the outhouse and scrub the floor in your bedroom, after I go,” said May Watson. “Mind you do it well. You are so careless.”
    “Yes, Auntie,” said Ellen. She looked through the minute window of the kitchen, and again the melancholy came to her.
    “I am going to ask Mrs. Porter, the Mayor’s wife, if she can hire you next spring,” said May Watson. “She pays her cook eight dollars a month! A fortune. I heard she needs someone extra to wash. I hope to get the work, then you’ll have to take care of this house—after school,” she added with angry contempt.
    Muttering, she put a steaming yellow bowl on the table. “Spareribs. Eights cents a pound. Outrageous. I got two pounds. Don’t eat it all. We will have the rest for dinner tomorrow night. Ellen, why are you standing there like a gawk? You fill up the whole kitchen. You are too big—like your father.” Then she caught her breath, for this was the first time she had spoken to Ellen of her paternal parent.
    Ellen became alert. “My papa? What was he like, Auntie?”
    “Brown-faced and black-eyed, and big as a house, and with a loud voice like yours,” said May Watson, sitting down on one of the creaking kitchen chairs. “Never mind. He was no good. Never could see what your mother saw in him. Don’t take too much of the spareribs. You’re always so hungry, and that’s funny. You don’t work.” Then she was saddened, for she loved her niece. Maybe, she thought, I can bring some scraps home for the girl; they eat well at the Mayor’s, he with that rich farm and all. Perhaps a piece of meat or the heels of fresh bread, or a slice of cake or pie. Or a handful of strawberries. Mrs. Porter is very mean, though; watched every crumb of food, and her cook’s worse. May Watson touched her wide pocket. She could slip something in there, when no one was looking. So, it was stealing and maybe it was sinful, but Ellen was still growing and was always hungry. The bitterness in May Watson’s heart increased. She was to receive one dollar for an afternoon and evening’s work; the housemaid was ill. It was said the Mayor’s son had got her