"
She frowned at her image in the glass behind the closed door of her
room as she set about unfastening the linen dress she had worn that
afternoon. Deep in her trunk, along with much other unused finery, it
had reposed all summer. That ingrained instinct to be admired, to be
garbed fittingly and well, came back to her as soon as she was rested.
And though there were none but squirrels and bluejays and occasionally
Katy John to cast admiring eyes upon her, it had pleased her for a week
to wear her best, and wander about the beaches and among the dusky
trunks of giant fir, a picture of blooming, well-groomed womanhood. She
took off the dress and threw it on the bed with a resentful rush of
feeling. The treadmill gaped for her again. But not for long. She was
through with that. She was glad that Charlie's prospects pleased him. He
could not call on her to help him out of a hole now. She would tell him
her decision to-night. And as soon as he could get a cook to fill her
place, then good-by to Roaring Lake, good-by to kitchen smells and flies
and sixteen hours a day over a hot stove.
She wondered why such a loathing of the work afflicted her; if all who
earned their bread in the sweat of their brow were ridden with that
feeling,--woodsmen, cooks, chauffeurs, the slaves of personal service
and the great industrial mills alike? Her heart went out to them if they
were. But she was quite sure that work could be otherwise than
repellent, enslaving. She recalled that cooks and maids had worked in
her father's house with no sign of the revolt that now assailed her.
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