s not my place to go up there and work like a nigger for a crowd of old cheap boarders. You know that, don’t you? DON’T you?”
“Yes’m,” said Eugene, meekly serving as audience.
“But she’d die rather than admit it. Do you ever hear her say a word of thanks? Do I get,” she said laughing suddenly, her hysteria crossed for the moment with her great humor, “do I get so much as’go-to-hell’for it?”
“NO!” squealed Eugene, going off in fits of idiot laughter.
“Why, law me, child. H-m! Yes. It’s GOOD soup,” said she, touched with her great earthy burlesque.
He tore his collar open, and undid his trousers, sliding to the floor in an apoplexy of laughter.
“Sdop! Sdop! You’re g-g-gilling me!”
“H-m! Why, law me! Yes,” she continued, grinning at him as if she hoped to succeed.
Nevertheless, whether Eliza was servantless or not, she went daily at dinner, the mid-day meal, to help at table, and frequently at night when Gant and the boys ate with Eliza instead of at home. She went because of her deep desire to serve, because it satisfied her need for giving more than was returned, and because, in spite of her jibes, along with Gant, at the Barn, and the “cheap boarders,” the animation of feeding, the clatter of plates, the braided clamor of their talk, stimulated and excited her.
Like Gant, like Luke, she needed extension in life, movement, excitement: she wanted to dominate, to entertain, to be the life of the party. On small solicitation, she sang for the boarders, thumping the cheap piano with her heavy accurate touch, and singing in her strong, vibrant, somewhat hard soprano a repertory of songs classical, sentimental, and comic. Eugene remembered the soft cool nights of summer, the assembled boarders and “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now,” which Gant demanded over and over; “Love Me and the World Is Mine”; “Till the Sands of the Desert Grow Cold”; “Dear Old Girl, the Rob-BIN Sings Above You”; “The End of a Perfect Day”; and “Alexander’s Rag-Time Band,” which Luke had practised in a tortured house for weeks, and sung with thunderous success in the High School Minstrels.
