She dragged it into the farthest corner. She tried
to open the window, but it was nailed fast.
Then a determined look shone in her eyes. She went quickly
down the little ladder.
"Please ma'am," she said going over to Mrs. Motherwell,
"I can't sleep up there. It is full of diseases and
microscopes."
"It's what?" Mrs. Motherwell almost screamed. She was in
the pantry making pies.
"It has old air in it," Pearl said, "and it will give me
the fever."
Mrs. Motherwell glared at the little girl. She forgot
all about the frying pan.
"Good gracious!" she said. "It's a queer thing if hired
help are going to dictate where they are going to sleep.
Maybe you'd like a bed set up for you in the parlour!"
"Not if the windies ain't open," Pearl declared stoutly.
"Well they ain't; there hasn't been a window open in this
house since it was built, and there isn't going to be,
letting in dust and flies."
Pearl gasped. What would Mrs. Francis say to that?
"It's in yer graves ye ought to be then, ma'am," she said
with honest conviction. "Mrs. Francis told me never to
sleep in a room with the windies all down, and I as good
as promised I wouldn't. Can't we open that wee windy,
ma'am?"
Mrs. Motherwell was tired, unutterably tired, not with
that day's work alone, but with the days and years that
had passed away in gray dreariness; the past barren and
bleak, the future bringing only visions of heavier burdens.
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