A Daughter of the Morning

stared at me. "Such airs," she says. "And callin' me 'Mother.' Who you been with? What you rigged out like that for?" "I didn't dress up for anybody," I says, "only because I wanted to." "Such a young one as you've turned out," says she. "What's to become of you I don't know. Wait till your Pa comes in?I'll tell him." "Mother," I says, "I'm twenty years old. You call me 'Cosma,' and let me call you 'Mother.' And don't feel you have to scold me all the time." "I'll quit scolding you fast enough," she says, "when you quit deserving it. Go and get out of them togs, the dishes are waiting for you." I went in the house. Mis' Bingy was not there, up-stairs or down. I went back to the door and asked about her. "Why, she's gone home," says Mother. "You didn't s'pose she was going to live here, did you?" "Home?" I says. "Where that man is?" "We can't all pick out our homes," she says, scrubbing the boards. Pa heard her. He was just coming in from the barn with the swill buckets to fill. "That's you," he says, "finding fault with the hands that feeds you. Where'd you be, I'd like to know, if it wasn't for this home and me? In the poorhouse." Mother straightened up on her knees by the well. "Mean to say I don't pay my keep?" she says. For a minute she seemed young and somebody, like when she was asleep. "Not when you dish up such pickings as you done this morning," says Pa. She screamed out something at him, and I ran acr...