"Did you bring some from home?" asked Marjorie, looking hurt.
"Why, of course not! I asked your mother, and she gave me the bottle, and told me to take what I wanted."
"A little coa.r.s.e salt or some damp tea-leaves strewed over a carpet before sweeping adds ease to the cleansing process," said Mrs. Downing, appearing on the scene and praising us for our thoroughness. "The reason is that both the salt and the tea-leaves being moist keep down the light floating dust, which gives more trouble than the heavier dirt. But now you will all be better for a short rest; so come into my snuggery, and have a gossip and a lunch, and then you may attack the enemy again."
"Mrs. Downing, you are a darling," exclaimed Lois, as we saw a platter of delicate sandwiches, and another of crisp ginger cookies, with a great pitcher of milk. "We didn"t know that we were hungry; but now that I think about it, I, for one, am certain that I could not have lived much longer without something to supply the waste of my failing cellular tissue."
"I think," replied Mrs. Downing, "that we would often feel much better for stopping in our day"s work to take a little rest. I often pause in the middle of my morning"s work and lie down for a half-hour, or I send to the kitchen and have a gla.s.s of hot milk brought me, with a crust or a cracker. You girls would not wish to lie down, but you would often find that you felt much fresher if you just stopped and rested, or put on your jackets and hats and ran away for a breath of out-door air. You would come back to your work like new beings."
"Just as we did in school after recess," said Marjorie.
"Precisely. Change of employment is the best tonic."
Our luncheon over, and our rooms swept, rugs shaken, stairs and pa.s.sages thoroughly brushed and wiped, we polished the windows with cloths dipped in ammonia water and wrung out, and followed them by a dry rubbing with soft linen cloths. Then it was time to restore the furniture to its place, and bring out the ornaments again from their seclusion.
Now we saw what an advantage we had gained in having prepared these before we began the campaign. In a very little while the work was done and the house settled, and so spotless and speckless we felt sure it would keep clean for weeks.
Mother"s way is to use a patent sweeper daily in rooms which are occupied for sewing and other work, and she says that she does not find it necessary to give her rooms more than a light sweeping oftener than once in six weeks. Of course it would be different if we had a large family.
Paint should be wiped, door-k.n.o.bs polished, and a touch of the duster given to everything on these sweeping days.
The Clover Leaves voted that feather-dusters, as a rule, were a delusion. One often sees a girl, who looks very complacent as she flirts a feather-duster over a parlor, displacing the dust so that it may settle somewhere else. All dusted articles should be wiped off, and the dust itself gotten rid of, by taking it out of the house, and leaving it no chance to get back on that day at least.
When I reached home in time for our one o"clock dinner, I found Great-aunt Jessamine and grandmamma both waiting for me, and the former, who was a jolly little old lady, was quite delighted over the Bloomdale girls and their housekeeping.
"All is," she said, "will those Downings do as well when there are no other girls to make them think the work is play?"
"Oh!" answered grandmamma, "I never trouble my head about what folks will do in the future. I have enough to do looking after what they do in the present. Alice here gets along very well all by herself a great part of the time. By-the-way, child, did Aunt Hetty give thee mother"s letter?"
I rushed off to get my treasure. It would soon be the blessed day when I might expect a letter telling me when my father and mother would be at home again.
CHAPTER V.
A LITTLE OF EVERYTHING.
Just as I began to be a wee little bit tired of housework, and to feel that I would like nothing so much as a day with my birds, my fancy-work, and a charming story-book, what should happen but that grandmamma"s headache and Aunt Hetty"s "misery in her bones" should both come at once.
Tap, tap, tap on the floor above my head in the early dawn came grandmamma"s ebony stick.
Veva Fay and Marjorie Downing were both spending the night with me. Veva had slept on the wide, old-fashioned lounge in the corner, and Marjorie in the broad couch with me, and we had all talked till it was very late, as girls always do when they sleep in one room, unless, of course, they are sisters, or at school, and used to it.
I had a beautiful room. It ran half across the front of the house, and had four great windows, a big fire-place, filled in summer with branches of cedar, or bunches of ferns, growing in a low box, and filling the great s.p.a.ce with cool green shade, and in winter the delight of the girls, because of the famous hickory fires which blazed there, always ready to light at a touch.
In one corner stood my mahogany desk, above it a lovely picture of the Madonna and Child. Easy-chairs were standing around, and there were ha.s.socks and ottomans in corners and beside the windows. My favorite engraving--a picture representing two children straying near a precipice, fearing no danger, and just ready to fall, when behind them, sweeping softly down, comes their guardian angel--hung over the mantel.
How much pleasure I took in that room, in the book shelves always full, in the pretty rugs and the cool matting and the dainty drapery, all girls can imagine. It was my own Snuggery, and I kept it in the loveliest good order, as mother liked me to.
Tap, tap, tap.
"Goodness!" cried Veva, only half awake.
"What is that? Mice?" said Marjorie, timidly.
"Burglars!" exclaimed Veva.
"Hush, girls!" I said, shaking off my drowsiness. "It"s poor grandmamma, and she has one of her fearfulest headaches. It"s two weeks since she had the last, so one may be expected about now. The tap means, "Come to me, quickly.""
I ran to the door, and said, "Coming, grandmamma!" slipped my feet into my soft knitted shoes, and hurried my gray flannel wrapper on, then hastened to her bedside. I found that grandmamma was not so very ill, only felt unable to get up to breakfast with us, and wanted some gruel made as soon as possible.
"I"ve been waiting to hear some stir in the house," she said, "but n.o.body seemed to be awake. Isn"t it later than usual, girlie?"
I tiptoed over to grandmamma"s mantel, and looked at her little French clock. It _was_ late! Eight, and past, and Hetty had not called us. What could be the matter?
Down I flew to find out what ailed Aunt Hetty. She was usually an early riser.
Before I reached her room, which was on the same floor with the kitchen, I heard groans issuing from it, and Hetty"s voice saying: "Dear me! Oh, dear me!" in the most despairing, agonizing tones. Hetty always makes the most of a "misery in her bones."
"What is it, aunty?" I asked, peering into the room, which she _would_ keep as dark as a pocket.
"De misery in my bones, child! De ole king chills! Sometimes I"m up!
Sometimes I"m down!"
The bed shook under the poor thing, and I ran out to ask Patrick to go for the doctor, while I made the fire, and called the girls to help prepare breakfast.
First in order after lighting the fire, which being of wood blazed up directly that the match was applied to the kindlings, came the making of the corn-meal gruel.
A tablespoonful of corn meal wet with six tablespoonfuls of milk, added one by one, gradually, so that the meal is quite free from lumps. One pint of boiling water, and a little salt. You must stir the smooth mixture of the meal and milk into the boiling water. It will cool it a little, and you must stir it until it comes to a boil, then stand it back, and let it simmer fifteen minutes.
The doctor was caught by Patrick just leaving his house to go to a patient ten miles off. He prescribed for Aunt Hetty, looked in upon grandmamma, and told me to keep up my courage, I was a capital little nurse, and he would rather have me to take care of him than anybody else he knew, if he were ill, which he never was.
He drove off in his old buggy, leaving three little maids watching him with admiring eyes. We all loved Doctor Chester. "Now, girls," I said, "we must get our breakfast. We cannot live on air."
Marjorie brought the eggs and milk. Veva cut the bread and picked the blackberries. I put the pan on to heat for the omelette, and this is the way we made it:
Three eggs, broken separately and beaten hard--
"In making an omelette, Children, you see, The longer you beat it, The lighter "twill be,"
hummed Marjorie, add a teaspoonful of milk, and beat up with the eggs; beat until the very last moment when you pour into the pan, in which you have dropped a bit of b.u.t.ter, over the hot fire. As soon as it sets, move the pan to a cooler part of the stove, and slip a knife under the edge to prevent its sticking to the pan; when it is almost firm in the middle, slant the pan a little, slip your knife all the way round the edge to get it free, then tip it over in such a way that it will fold as it falls on the plate.
You should serve an omelette on a hot plate, and it requires a little dexterity to learn how to take it out neatly.
Veva exclaimed, "Oh, Milly, you forgot the salt!"
"No," I explained; "French cooks declare that salt should never be mixed with eggs when they are prepared for omelette. It makes the omelette tough and leathery. A little salt, however, may be sprinkled upon it just before it is turned out upon the dish."