Speed Nell
Molly Brown of Kentucky
“Oh!” she faltered, “I didn’t know it was so – so – dusty in here. Katy, the new maid, was supposed to have cleaned it before I came.”
“What do you care for a few Irishman’s curtains?” said the hero-worshipping Billie. “No one noticed them until – ahem – until the sun came in the window.” She said sun came in the window but she plainly meant Fern came in the door.
“I haven’t had time to do much housekeeping since I got back,” continued Molly, lamely. “The new maid, Katy, that Edwin got from New York, is most inefficient but so good-natured that I am hoping to train her. The truth of the matter is that she and I spent the whole morning doing things for Mildred and we let the house go. I am going to have a big cleaning to-morrow.”
Molly felt like weeping with mortification and she began to hate herself for making explanations and excuses to Alice Fern. Even if she kept Professor Green’s house festooned in cobwebs from attic to cellar and had dust over everything thick enough to write your name, what business was it of this perfect person? She suddenly realized, too, that that perfect person had never uttered a word although she had looked volumes.
Miss Fern arose from her prim seat and made a rather hasty retreat. The relieved Molly excused herself to the girls and rushed to the kitchen to start Katy on the dinner that should have been on half an hour before. What was her chagrin to find the fire only just kindled, as Katy had let it go out so that she might polish the stove. The Irish girl was on her knees “scroobing,” happy in a sea of soap suds.
Molly almost had hysterics. How could she ever get things done? Edwin would be home any moment now and she could not stand having a miserable underdone dinner for him, nor could she stand having his dinner hours late. She realized that there was no use in reprimanding Katy, – the girl was simply ignorant. She asked her gently to postpone her “scroobing” until later and to wash her hands and prepare the vegetables. Then she piled kindling wood in the range until the chimney roared so that Katy said it sounded like a banshee. The oven must be hot for the roast.
“I tell you what to do, Katy: make some tea immediately and slice some bread quite thin, open this box of peanut cookies, and we will have such a grand tea that the master won’t be hungry until the roast is done.”
“And phwat a schmart trick!” laughed the girl.
When Miss Fern made her adieux, Molly had flown so quickly to the kitchen that she had not seen her husband crossing the campus. Alice Fern had seen him, however, and her greeting of him was so warm and friendly, her smile so charming and her manner so cordial that she hardly seemed the same person who had just left poor Molly stuttering and stammering apologies over her Irishman’s curtains.
“Look at the pill!” exclaimed Jo. “She is about to eat up Epiménides Antinous Green.” That was the name Professor Green was known by at Wellington.
“Did you ever see any one cast such a damper over a crowd without saying a single word? I thought Molly was going to cry,” declared Billie.
“I think our friend is looking very tired,” said Thelma. “I wish we could do something for her. She says this new maid is almost worse than none at all.”
“I’ve got a scheme!” squealed Billie. “I know of a way to help. Gather ’round me, girls!” And then such another whispering as went on in the house – while Molly behaved like triplets in the kitchen, being in at least three places at one time in her determination to get dinner on the stove. Mildred lay on the divan, happy with her newly found toes, and Edwin helped Alice Fern into her glass show case.
“I appreciate your coming to see my wife so soon, Alice. I should so like to have you and Molly be close friends.”
“Thank you, Edwin, I am sure nothing would please me more. You must bring Molly out to see us.” Could this be the same person who had made the living room look so dusty and ill kempt only a few minutes before, this gracious, charming, sweet, friendly creature, who doted on babies? She had paid no attention to Mildred except to give her a tentative poke with her daintily gloved finger, but to hear her conversation with Edwin, one would have gathered that she was a supreme lover of children.
The girls would not stay to tea, although Molly pressed them, but full of some scheme, they hurried off.
Dinner was not so very late, after all, and the tea and bread and peanut cookies saw to it that the professor was not too hungry before the leg of lamb had reached the proper stage of serving. Molly was too much of a culinary artist not to feel elated when things turned out right, which they usually did if she could get her finger in the pie. The day had been a very trying one for her. The sleepless night had left her little strength to grapple with it and the slow stupidity of Katy was very irritating. It was over at last, however, and dear little Mildred had decided to let her pigs rest and had gone quietly to sleep at the proper time that a well-trained infant should. Edwin was smoking his after-dinner pipe and everything was very peaceful and pleasant. Molly was trying to keep her eyes open, ashamed to confess that she was so sleepy she could hardly see.
She lay back in the easy chair while Edwin read aloud from his scrap book of fugitive verse. This scrap book Professor Green had started when he was in college, putting in only the rare, fine things he found in magazine reading. Molly had helped him in his collecting and now the volume was assuming vast proportions.
Suddenly Molly’s upturned eyes rested on the terrible cobweb that had been her Waterloo of the afternoon. How black and threatening it looked! She hoped Edwin would not see it. And the books! Actually you had to open one and beat it and blow it before you dared begin to read. All this must be cleaned to-morrow and oh, how tired she was!
“Did not Alice look lovely this afternoon?” said Edwin, stopping his reading for a moment. “I hope you and she are going to be great friends. I think it was very nice for her to come so soon to call on you. She spoke so sweetly of the baby, too.”
Molly said nothing but gazed at the cobweb. She said nothing but she did some thinking:
“Molly Brown, what right have you, just because you are tired and Alice Fern came to call on you, looking very pretty and very beautifully dressed, and found you all frumpy and your living room looking like a pig sty, what right have you, I say, to sulk? Now you answer your husband and tell him Alice was pretty and don’t tell him anything else.” Accordingly, after giving herself the mental chastisement, Molly emitted a faint:
“Yes, very pretty!” But it was so faint and so far away that Edwin looked at her in alarm, and then it was that she could stand nothing more and broke down and shed a few tears.
“Why, Molly, my dearest girl, what is the matter?”
“Nothing, but I am tired and everything is so dirty. Look at the cobwebs! Look at the dust on the books! Look at me! I am an old frowsy, untidy frump.”
“You! Why, honey, you are always lovely. As for dust – don’t bother about that. Let me read you this wonderful little poem by Gertrude Hall. I clipped it years ago.”
Professor Green saw that Molly was tired and unstrung and he well knew that nothing soothed her more than poetry. Of course, man-like, he had no idea that what he had said about Alice Fern’s looking so sweet had been too much for her, as she had contrasted herself all the afternoon with her husband’s immaculate cousin. Molly wiped away the foolish tears as Edwin read the poem.
“THE DUST
By Gertrude Hall
It settles softly on your things,
Impalpable, fine, light, dull, gray;
The dingy dust-clout Betty brings,
And, singing, brushes it away:
And it’s a queen’s robe, once so proud,
And it’s the moths fed in its fold,
It’s leaves, and roses, and the shroud,
Wherein an ancient Saint was rolled.
And it is beauty’s golden hair,
And it is genius’ wreath of bay,
And it is lips once red and fair
That kissed in some forgotten May.”
“It is lovely, exquisite!” breathed Molly. “I don’t feel nearly so bad about it as I did.”
But she did wish that Alice Fern had not seen that black, black cobweb.
CHAPTER XVII.
HEROES AND HERO WORSHIPERS
The next morning poor Molly slept late again. With all good intentions of waking early and going down stairs in time to see about her husband’s neglected breakfast, when morning came she did not stir. Mildred had given her another wakeful night after all, finding out more things about her little pigs. Finally the little monkey had given up and dropped off to sleep, and she and her doting mother were both dead to the world when the time came for Professor Green to go to lectures.
Again he gave instructions to Katy not to disturb the mistress and crept out of the house as still as a mouse. Breakfast had been a little better. Molly was rubbing off on Katy evidently. Just to associate with such a culinary genius as Molly must have its effect even on the worst cook in the world, which Katy surely seemed to be.
Coming across the campus, he ran into Billie McKym, Josephine Crittenden and Thelma Olsen. They looked very bright and rosy as they gave him a cheery good morning. Each carried a bundle. He wondered that they were going away from lecture halls instead of toward them. But after all, it was not his business to be the whipper-in for lectures. Wellington was a college and not a boarding school. If students chose to cut lectures, it was their own affair until the final reckoning.
“Just our luck to meet Epiménides Antinous!” cried Billie. “He should have been out of the house five minutes ago, at least.”
“His legs are so long he doesn’t have to start early,” declared Jo. “Just see him sprint!”
“I am certainly sorry to cut his lecture to-day,” sighed Thelma, “but this thing must be done.”
The Greens’ front door was never locked except at night, so the girls crept quietly in. Billie peeped into the kitchen, where she discovered Katy on her knees “scroobing” the part of the kitchen she could not finish the evening before, when Molly was so hard-hearted as to make her stop and prepare vegetables. Such a sea of suds!
“Katy,” whispered Billie.
“Merciful Mither! And phwat is it? Ye scart me,” and the girl sat back on her heels and looked at Billie with round, wide eyes.
“We are great friends of Mrs. Green and we have come to dust her books and – ahem – do a few little things. Is she still asleep?”
“Yis, and the master was after saying she must not be distoorbed, not on no account.”
“Of course she must not be! That is why we have come to dust the things. We think she looks so tired.”
“And so she is, the scwate lamb; but she do fly around so, and she do cook up so mooch. I tell her that she thinks more of her man’s insides thin she do of her own outsides.”
“Well, Katy, we want you to let us have a broom and a wall brush. We brought our own aprons and rags,” and Billie pressed a round, hard something into Katy’s hand. It was not so large as a church door nor so deep as a well, but it served to get the Irish girl up off of her run-down heels; and in a trice the coveted broom and wall brush were in possession of the three conspirators, as well as a stepladder, which they decided would be needful.
“Don’t say a word to Mrs. Green, Katy, – now remember. We are going to work very quietly and hope to finish before she gets downstairs. We don’t want her to know who did it, but we mean to get it all done before noon,” said Jo, rolling up her sport shirtsleeves and disclosing muscular arms, that showed what athletics had done for her and what she could do for athletics.
“Where must we begin, Thelma?” asked Billie, who was as willing as could be but knew no more about cleaning than a hog does about holidays, Jo declared.
“Begin at the top,” laughed Thelma, tying up her yellow head in a great towel and rolling up her sleeves.
“Gee, your arms are beautiful!” exclaimed Billie. “I’d give my head for such arms. I’d like to drape them in a silver scarf. Think how they would gleam through.” The arms were snow white and while Thelma’s strength was much greater than Jo’s, her muscles did not show as they did on that athletic young person.
Thelma blushed and laughed as she balanced herself on a stepladder and began taking down pictures. A cloud of dust floated down and enveloped her.
“Look, look! She looks like the ‘white armed Gudrun’! Don’t you remember in William Morris’s ‘Fall of the Neiblungs’? The battle in Atli’s Hall?
“‘Lo, lo, in the hall of the Murder where the white-armed Gudrun stands,
Aloft by the kingly high-seat, and nought empty are her hands;
For the litten brand she beareth, and the grinded war-sword bare:
Still she stands for a little season till day groweth white and fair.
Without the garth of King Atli, but within, a wavering cloud
Rolls, hiding the roof and the roof-sun; then she stirrith and crieth aloud.’”
“Cut it out! Cut it out!” cried Jo, “and come lend a hand.”
“Mustn’t we dust before we sweep?” innocently asked Billie.
“If you want to, but you’ll have to dust again afterwards,” said the white-armed Gudrun from her ladder. “The books are really so dirty that I don’t think it would hurt to wipe down the walls without covering them, but that is a mighty poor cleaning method. Poor Molly! Didn’t she look tired yesterday? I hope she won’t think we are cheeky to take a hand in her affairs.”
“Cheeky! She will think we are her good friends, not like that snippy Miss Fern who stared so at the cobwebs and then went out and palavered over Epiménides Antinous. She used to claim him, so I am told. One of the nurses at the infirmary told me that when Epi Anti had typhoid there, years ago, Miss Fern came and dressed herself up like a nurse and almost bored the staff to death taking care of her sick cousin,” said Billie, delighted with the job that had been given her of wiping down walls. “Isn’t this splendid? Just look at all the dirt I got on my rag!”
“Well, don’t rub it back on the wall,” admonished Jo.
“No. Well, what must I do with it?”
“Can’t say, but don’t put it back on the walls.”
“Jo, you and Billie dust the books and I will finish up the pictures. I can’t trust myself to dust Professor Green’s books. I am afraid of breaking the tenth commandment all the time,” sighed Thelma. “I’ll wash the windows, too.”
“Oh, Thelma! The white-armed Gudrun sitting in windows washing them! That’s not occupation meet for a queen. Let me do it.”
“You, Billie McKym, wash a window! Did you ever wash one in your life?”
“Well, no, not exactly, but I bet I could. What’s the use of a college education if one can’t wash windows when she gets to be a full grown senior?”
But since the object of the girls was to get the room clean, it was decided that Thelma was to wash the windows. My, how they worked! Jo found she had muscles that her athletics had never revealed. She found them because they began to ache.
“Why, to dust all these books and books is as bad as building a house,” she said, straightening up and stretching when she had finished the poet’s corner.
“Exactly like laying brick,” declared Billie. “I’m going to join the Hod-carriers’ Union. I’ll be no scab.”
Katy had occasionally poked her head in at the door, entreating “whin they coom to the scroobing” to call her.
The cleaners made very little noise, so little that the sleeping Molly and Mildred were not at all disturbed.
“I wish she knew it was almost done,” said Thelma, perched in the window sill and rubbing vigorously on a shining pane. “She would be so glad. I know she is worrying about it in her sleep. Hark! There is the baby!”
Then began the business of the day upstairs. Katy was called, for water must be heated as Katy, according to her habit, had let the fire go out before the boiler was hot.
“Katy, we must hurry up with Mildred this morning and get to the library. It is filthy,” said Molly, as she slipped the little French flannel petticoat over Mildred’s bald head.
“Yes, mum!” grinned Katy.
“We have luncheon almost ready, with the cold lamb to start with.”
“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 appetite 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 glass 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 apron.
“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 glass, 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.
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 aprons and exposing to Molly’s amazed eyes three of the very blackest, dirtiest faces that ever Wellington had boasted in her senior class.
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 amusement, 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 noble 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 passed 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.”
“’Twas Billie,” from Thelma.
“Thelma and Jo did all the dirty work,” declared Billie.
“Dirty work, indeed! You looked as though you had used yourself to wipe down the walls with,” laughed Jo.
“Well, anyhow, when that snippy Miss Fern comes again, giving her perfunctory pokes at the baby and looking at the cobwebs until nobody can help seeing them, I bet she won’t find anything to turn up her nose at. I’d like to use her to clean the walls with. If there is anything I hate it is any one who is the pink of perfection in her own eyes. We were having such a cozy time until she lit on us with her dove-colored effects. Who cared whether there were cobwebs or not?”
“Did Miss Fern speak of the cobwebs?” asked Edwin, while the others sat around in frozen horror, remembering that she was his cousin and that he was evidently very fond of her.
“Oh, no, she didn’t open her lips; she just pursed them up and stared at the corner. Of course, she had already given her dig about Molly’s surely not having time to write and attend to her house, too; and then when she fixed her eyes on that Irishman’s curtain we all knew what she was thinking, and that she wanted us to know it, just as well as though she had spoken it and then written it and then had it put on the minutes… What’s the matter?.. Oh, Heavens! What have I done?.. Oh, Professor Green! She is your cousin! Please, please forgive me,” and Billie clasped her hands in entreaty.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” said the professor with a twinkle. “Go as far as you like. If the ladies have such open minds that he who runs may read, and they think disagreeable things about my wife, why, they deserve to be used for house cleaning purposes, have the floor wiped up with them and what not.”
The luncheon broke up in a laugh and evidently there were no hard feelings on the part of the host for the criticism of Miss Fern that had so ingenuously fallen from the lips of the irrepressible Billie.
“Billie! What a break!” screamed Jo, when they got outside after Molly had given them all an extra hug for the undying proof of friendship they had given her.
“Break, indeed! I never forgot for an instant that Epi Anti was a near cousin to that maidenhair fern. I just thought I’d let him know how she had acted and how uncomfortable she had made our Molly feel. I knew Molly would never let him know, and I could do it and make out it was a break.”
“Well, if you aren’t like Bret Harte’s heathen Chinee, I never saw one,” laughed Thelma.
“‘Which I wish to remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar.’”
“All the same, I bet old Epi Anti doesn’t tell Molly any more what a sweet thing Alice Fern is.”
“How do you know he did?”
“Insight into human nature,” and Billie made a saucy moue.
“Gee, my back aches!” said Jo. “I think I’ll do housework often. It certainly does reach muscles we don’t know about. But didn’t it pay just to see dear old Molly’s face when we rolled out from behind the sofa?”
And all of them agreed it had.
“Edwin,” said Molly, after the girls had gone, “I think I’ll send for Kizzie to come help me. I may put her in the kitchen and take Katy for a nurse.”
“Good! I am certainly glad you have come to that decision. What changed you?”
“Well, it seems to me that when it comes to the pass that my college girls feel so sorry for me they cut such lectures as yours to give the whole morning to cleaning up for me I must do something, and the only thing I can think of doing is to send for Kizzie.”
“Can you mix the black and white without coming to grief?”
“Remember, Katy is more green than white, and she is so good-natured, she could get along with anything.”
“I can’t tell you how relieved I am, honey. I wanted you to do what pleased you, but I could not see how I was coming in on this. I felt very lonesome, and while I wasn’t jealous of the baby, I was certainly envious of her. If Kizzie comes, you can be with me more and nurse me some.”
“Yes, dearie, I missed it, too, but somehow I couldn’t get through. If Katy had been more competent – ”
“But she wasn’t and isn’t.”
“No, she certainly isn’t, but she adores Mildred already and Mildred actually cries for her. I believe she would make a fine nurse. If only she doesn’t feel called upon to scrub the baby.”
