She waked early, as she had done all her nineteen years, and she got up promptly. And this morning she went to the bathroom in her dressing-gown, she didn’t seem to care any more if she met anyone in the hall. She ran a bath, and she did not care whether the noise of the water disturbed anyone. If they waked up, they could go to sleep again. There were no settled hours here, no seemly, pleasant routine.
There was no hot water, and it had to be a bath so cold that it made her gasp. She took her cotton uniform, still wet and muddy from yesterday, down into the kitchen and washed it; in the broom closet she found a piece of rope and she rigged it up on the back porch for a clothes line. She made coffee and drank it, eating a whole box of Kocktail Kracker Bities. There was nothing else.
I’m
