Carmella Commands
Miss Kelly was properly stern in rebuking this habit.
Carmella said “Yes, Miss Kelly,” at appropriate intervals, and thought of other things—mostly real estate.
That evening she decided, on sudden impulse, to tell her father that Mrs. Barrington had asked her to luncheon. To her surprise, he made little comment. If her mother had said she could go, very well! Would she please start the victrola? Of the failure of his real estate negotiations he had not spoken since they had said good-bye to Mr. Barrington’s agents.
Carmella was disappointed at his lack of interest. She wondered if by any chance her mother had talked with her father about it. Hitherto, it had been safe to talk to either without fear of parental breach of confidence.
It proved that nothing serious had been the matter with Baby Enrico. A tiny dose of castor oil was all he needed. But the district nurse’s visit gave Mrs. Coletta the chance she very much wanted to ask Miss Young, not as a nurse but as a friend, what a mother could do with a daughter who was steadily acquiring outside interests and who was inclined to talk back.
Many, many times in her three years of work in Little Italy Miss Young had heard this question, in one form or another. In more than one group of mothers that she encountered it was the chief, almost
[67]
