"Yes, mum."
"Don"t you think you could get the dining room cleaned while I am attending to the baby?"
"Yes, mum, if yez can schpare me."
"Oh, I think I can. But, Katy, before you go hand me that basket. And, Katy, perhaps you had better wash out this flannel skirt. I am so afraid she might run short of them. You can empty the water now--and, Katy, please hold the baby"s hand while I tie this ribbon, she is such a wiggler--and, Katy--a little boiled water now for her morning tipple.
She must drink lots of water to keep in good health."
"Yes, mum, and how aboot breakfast for yez, mum?"
"Oh, I forgot my breakfast! Of course I must eat some breakfast. I"ll come down to it."
"Oh, no, mum! And let me be after bringing it oop to yez, mum," insisted the wily Katy, who was anxious for the youthful house cleaners to accomplish their dark and secret mission without interruption. Not only was it great fun, a huge joke, in fact, for her to be paid fifty cents to let others do her work, but it meant that since others were doing it, she would not have to, and she could have just that much more time for "scroobing" and resting. A tray was accordingly got ready and Molly found she had a little more appet.i.te than the morning before; also, that Katy"s food was really a little better.
"Your coffee is better this morning, Katy," she said, believing that praise for feats accomplished but egged on the servitor to other and greater effort.
"Yes, mum, so the master said."
"Poor Edwin," thought Molly, "how I have neglected him. I must do better. But if I don"t wake up, I don"t wake up. If I could only get a little nap in the day time. Mother always wanted me to take one, but how can I? The living room must be cleaned to-day." She felt weary at the thought. Accustomed as she was to being out of doors a great deal, she really needed the fresh air.
"As soon as luncheon is over, we must get busy with the cleaning. I wish we might have done it in the forenoon, but I am afraid it is too late."
"Yes, mum, it"s too late!" and Katy indulged in such a hearty giggle that her mistress began to think perhaps she was feeble-minded as well as inefficient.
"Is the table in the dining room cleared off, Katy, so you can set it for luncheon?"
"No, mum, it is not!"
"Oh, Katy! What have you been doing all morning?"
"Well, mum, I scroobed my kitchen, and--and----"
"And what?" demanded Molly.
"And I did a little head work in the liberry, that is, I----"
"Oh, Katy, did you clean the living room, clean it well?"
"Well, mum, yez can wait and see if it schoots yez," and Katy beat a hasty retreat to warn the cleaners that the mistress was about to descend.
The room presented a very different appearance to what it had before the girls rolled up their sleeves. The slanting afternoon sun would seek out no dusty corners now; everything was spick and span. The books no longer had to be beaten and blown before you dared open them, and they stood in neat and orderly rows; the walls held no decorations in the shape of Irishman"s curtains now; the picture gla.s.s shone, as did the window panes; the rugs were out in the back yard sunning after a vigorous beating and brushing from Thelma, whom Billie called "the powerful Katrinka."
The floor, being the one part of the room that Katy had put some licks on, did not need anything more serious than a dusting after everything else was done.
"Katy, you might bring in the rugs now as we have done everything else,"
suggested Billie. Katy went out into the back yard and bundled up the rugs. Molly, seeing her from an upper window, smiled her approval.
"I believe she is going to do very well," she said to herself. "She seems to be trying, and she is so fond of Mildred."
"Come on, girls, we must hurry and get off! Molly will be down stairs any minute now and she must not see us," and Thelma unwound the towel from her head and took off her ap.r.o.n.
"Well, surely the white-armed Gudrun is not going across the campus with a black face," objected Billie. "Why, both of you look like negro minstrels----"
"And you!" interrupted Jo. "You should see yourself before you talk about kettles. You"d have not a leg to stand on and not a handle to your name. I told you to tie up your head. I believe nothing short of a shampoo and a Turkish bath will get the grime off you."
"Let"s hide behind the sofa and after Molly goes on the porch with the baby, we can sneak up to the bath room," suggested Thelma. The girls then crouched on the floor behind a sofa that stood near the poet"s corner.
In a minute Molly came down the stairs, little Mildred in her arms and on her face a contented and rested expression. She stood in the doorway of the living room and exclaimed with delight over its polished cleanliness.
"Oh, Katy, how splendid it is! Did you do it all by yourself and in such a short time? I don"t see how you managed it. Why, you have even dusted the books. That is almost a day"s work in itself. I was dreading it so,--it is such a back breaking job."
Jo rubbed her aching back, with a grim smile, and nudged Billie.
"And you have kept yourself so clean, too!" Molly began to feel that she had the prize servant of the east: one who could clean such an Augean Stable as that room had looked, dust all the books, wash the windows and wipe down walls, beat rugs, polish picture gla.s.s, etc., etc., and still be neat and tidy. "Why, I would have been black all over if I had done such a great work."
Katy stood by, quite delighted with the undeserved praise. The young ladies had told her not to tell and far be it from her to refuse to accept the unaccustomed praise from any one. She had never been very apt in any work she had undertaken and no one had ever taken any great pains to teach her, and now if this pretty lady wanted to praise her, why she was more than willing. She felt in her pocket for her fifty cent piece, that still seemed a great joke to her. The sweet taste of the praise did one great thing in her kindly Irish soul: it was so pleasant, she determined to have more of it, and through her slow intelligence there filtered the fact that to get more praise, she must deserve more praise, and to deserve it she must work for it. She beat a hasty retreat to the dining room and actually cleared off the table, where the master had eaten his solitary breakfast, in a full run. She broke no dishes that morning, either, which was a great step forward.
Molly could not tear herself away from the wonder room. She moved around, busying herself changing ornaments a bit and placing chairs at a slightly different angle, doing those little things that make a room partake of a certain personality.
"Here, baby, lie on the sofa, honey. Muddy is going to give you a little ride. Do you know, darling, that Katy knows how to put things in place just like a lady? She must have an artistic soul. Look how she has arranged the mantel-piece! Servants usually make things look so stiff.
Actually there is nothing for me to do in the room, she has done it so beautifully."
Billy here dug an elbow into Jo"s lame back that almost made her squeal, but she held on to her emotions and in turn gave her chum a fourth degree pinch.
"Now, Muddy is going to ride her baby--this sofa must go closer to the wall," and Molly put Mildred on the sofa and gave it a vigorous push.
The law of impenetrability, that two things cannot be in the same place at the same time, prevented the baby from having much of a ride. Molly gave a harder push. "I must be very feeble if I can"t budge this sofa."
Then came a smothered groan from the huddled girls, and one by one they emerged from their corner, clutching their bundles of dust rags and ap.r.o.ns and exposing to Molly"s amazed eyes three of the very blackest, dirtiest faces that ever Wellington had boasted in her senior cla.s.s.
They sat on the floor and laughed and giggled, and Molly sat down beside them and would have felt like a college girl again herself if it had not been for little Mildred, who took all the laughter as an entertainment, got up for her express amus.e.m.e.nt, and gurgled accordingly.
"Now you must all stay to luncheon!" cried the hospitable Molly.
"Oh, indeed we mustn"t," said Billie, who never could quite get used to Molly"s wholesale hospitality, having been brought up in the lap of luxury but with no privileges of inviting persons off hand to meals.
"But you must. I won"t do a thing for you but just put on more plates.
I was going to have the very simplest meal and I"ll still have it."
The girls stayed, after giving themselves a vigorous scrubbing, and Molly"s luncheon was ready when Professor Green arrived. The cold leg of lamb played a n.o.ble part at the impromptu party, flanked by a lettuce salad that Billie insisted upon dressing, reminding Molly more than ever of her darling Judy. A barrel of preserves had just arrived, some that Molly and Kizzie had put up during the summer. On opening it, a jar of blackberry jam, being on top, was chosen to grace the occasion. Molly made some of the tiny biscuit that her husband loved and that seemed such a joke to Katy. When she came in bearing a plate of hot ones, she spread her mouth in a grin so broad that Professor Green declared she could easily have disposed of six at one mouthful.
"I always call them Gulliver biscuit," he said, helping himself to three at a time, "because in the old Gulliver"s Travels I used to read when I was a kid there was a picture of Gulliver being fed by the Lilliputians.
He was represented by a great head, and the Lilliputians were climbing up his face by ladders and pouring down his throat barrels of little biscuit that were just about the size of these."
They had a merry time at that meal. Molly told her husband why his prize pupils had cut his lectures and all others that morning, and how she had almost pa.s.sed a steam roller over them in form of the library sofa.
"We were terribly afraid we would offend her," explained Thelma, "but she was dear to us."
"Offend me! Why, I can"t think of anything in all my life that has ever happened to me that has touched me more. I don"t see how you ever thought of doing anything so nice."