THE MANSE GIRLS CLEAN HOUSE
“Ugh,” said Faith, sitting up in bed with a shiver. “It’s raining. I do
hate a rainy Sunday. Sunday is dull enough even when it’s fine.”
“We oughtn’t to find Sunday dull,” said Una sleepily, trying to pull
her drowsy wits together with an uneasy conviction that they had
overslept.
“But we _do_, you know,” said Faith candidly. “Mary Vance says most
Sundays are so dull she could hang herself.”
“We ought to like Sunday better than Mary Vance,” said Una
remorsefully. “We’re the minister’s children.”
“I wish we were a blacksmith’s children,” protested Faith angrily,
hunting for her stockings. “_Then_ people wouldn’t expect us to be
better than other children. _Just_ look at the holes in my heels. Mary
darned them all up before she went away, but they’re as bad as ever
now. Una, get up. I can’t get the breakfast alone. Oh, dear. I wish
father and Jerry were home. You wouldn’t think we’d miss father much—we
don’t see much of him when he is home. And yet _everything_ seems gone.
I must run in and see how Aunt Martha is.”
“Is she any better?” asked Una, when Faith returned.
“No, she isn’t. She’s groaning with the misery still. Maybe we ought to
tell Dr. Blythe. But she says not—she never had a doctor in her life
and she isn’t going to begin now. She says doctors just live by
poisoning people. Do you suppose they do?”
“No, of course not,” said Una indignantly. “I’m sure Dr. Blythe
wouldn’t poison anybody.”
“Well, we’ll have to rub Aunt Martha’s back again after breakfast. We’d
better not make the flannels as hot as we did yesterday.”
Faith giggled over the remembrance. They had nearly scalded the skin
off poor Aunt Martha’s back. Una sighed. Mary Vance would have known
just what the precise temperature of flannels for a misery back should
be. Mary knew everything. They knew nothing. And how could they learn,
save by bitter experience for which, in this instance, unfortunate Aunt
Martha had paid?
The preceding Monday Mr. Meredith had left for Nova Scotia to spend his
short vacation, taking Jerry with him. On Wednesday Aunt Martha was
suddenly seized with a recurring and mysterious ailment which she
always called “the misery,” and which was tolerably certain to attack
her at the most inconvenient times. She could not rise from her bed,
any movement causing agony. A doctor she flatly refused to have. Faith
and Una cooked the meals and waited on her. The less said about the
meals the better—yet they were not much worse than Aunt Martha’s had
been. There were many women in the village who would have been glad to
come and help, but Aunt Martha refused to let her plight be known.
“You must worry on till I kin git around,” she groaned. “Thank
goodness, John isn’t here. There’s a plenty o’ cold biled meat and
bread and you kin try your hand at making porridge.”
The girls had tried their hand, but so far without much success. The
first day it had been too thin. The next day so thick that you could
cut it in slices. And both days it had been burned.
“I hate porridge,” said Faith viciously. “When I have a house of my own
I’m _never_ going to have a single bit of porridge in it.”
“What’ll your children do then?” asked Una. “Children have to have
porridge or they won’t grow. Everybody says so.”
“They’ll have to get along without it or stay runts,” retorted Faith
stubbornly. “Here, Una, you stir it while I set the table. If I leave
it for a minute the horrid stuff will burn. It’s half past nine. We’ll
be late for Sunday School.”
“I haven’t seen anyone going past yet,” said Una. “There won’t likely
be many out. Just see how it’s pouring. And when there’s no preaching
the folks won’t come from a distance to bring the children.”
“Go and call Carl,” said Faith.
Carl, it appeared, had a sore throat, induced by getting wet in the
Rainbow Valley marsh the previous evening while pursuing dragon-flies.
He had come home with dripping stockings and boots and had sat out the
evening in them. He could not eat any breakfast and Faith made him go
back to bed again. She and Una left the table as it was and went to
Sunday School. There was no one in the school room when they got there
and no one came. They waited until eleven and then went home.
“There doesn’t seem to be anybody at the Methodist Sunday School
either,” said Una.
“I’m _glad_,” said Faith. “I’d hate to think the Methodists were better
at going to Sunday School on rainy Sundays than the Presbyterians. But
there’s no preaching in their Church to-day, either, so likely their
Sunday School is in the afternoon.”
Una washed the dishes, doing them quite nicely, for so much had she
learned from Mary Vance. Faith swept the floor after a fashion and
peeled the potatoes for dinner, cutting her finger in the process.
“I wish we had something for dinner besides ditto,” sighed Una. “I’m so
tired of it. The Blythe children don’t know what ditto is. And we
_never_ have any pudding. Nan says Susan would faint if they had no
pudding on Sundays. Why aren’t we like other people, Faith?”
“I don’t want to be like other people,” laughed Faith, tying up her
bleeding finger. “I like being myself. It’s more interesting. Jessie
Drew is as good a housekeeper as her mother, but would you want to be
as stupid as she is?”
“But our house isn’t right. Mary Vance says so. She says people talk
about it being so untidy.”
Faith had an inspiration.
“We’ll clean it all up,” she cried. “We’ll go right to work to-morrow.
It’s a real good chance when Aunt Martha is laid up and can’t interfere
with us. We’ll have it all lovely and clean when father comes home,
just like it was when Mary went away. _Any one_ can sweep and dust and
wash windows. People won’t be able to talk about us any more. Jem
Blythe says it’s only old cats that talk, but their talk hurts just as
much as anybody’s.”
“I hope it will be fine to-morrow,” said Una, fired with enthusiasm.
“Oh, Faith, it will be splendid to be all cleaned up and like other
people.”
“I hope Aunt Martha’s misery will last over to-morrow,” said Faith. “If
it doesn’t we won’t get a single thing done.”
Faith’s amiable wish was fulfilled. The next day found Aunt Martha
still unable to rise. Carl, too, was still sick and easily prevailed on
to stay in bed. Neither Faith nor Una had any idea how sick the boy
really was; a watchful mother would have had a doctor without delay;
but there was no mother, and poor little Carl, with his sore throat and
aching head and crimson cheeks, rolled himself up in his twisted
bedclothes and suffered alone, somewhat comforted by the companionship
of a small green lizard in the pocket of his ragged nighty.
The world was full of summer sunshine after the rain. It was a peerless
day for house-cleaning and Faith and Una went gaily to work.
“We’ll clean the dining-room and the parlour,” said Faith. “It wouldn’t
do to meddle with the study, and it doesn’t matter much about the
upstairs. The first thing is to take everything out.”
Accordingly, everything was taken out. The furniture was piled on the
veranda and lawn and the Methodist graveyard fence was gaily draped
with rugs. An orgy of sweeping followed, with an attempt at dusting on
Una’s part, while Faith washed the windows of the dining-room, breaking
one pane and cracking two in the process. Una surveyed the streaked
result dubiously.
“They don’t look right, somehow,” she said. “Mrs. Elliott’s and Susan’s
windows just shine and sparkle.”
“Never mind. They let the sunshine through just as well,” said Faith
cheerfully. “They _must_ be clean after all the soap and water I’ve
used, and that’s the main thing. Now, it’s past eleven, so I’ll wipe up
this mess on the floor and we’ll go outside. You dust the furniture and
I’ll shake the rugs. I’m going to do it in the graveyard. I don’t want
to send dust flying all over the lawn.”
Faith enjoyed the rug shaking. To stand on Hezekiah Pollock’s
tombstone, flapping and shaking rugs, was real fun. To be sure, Elder
Abraham Clow and his wife, driving past in their capacious
double-seated buggy, seemed to gaze at her in grim disapproval.
“Isn’t that a terrible sight?” said Elder Abraham solemnly.
“I would never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,”
said Mrs. Elder Abraham, more solemnly still.
Faith waved a door mat cheerily at the Clow party. It did not worry her
that the elder and his wife did not return her greeting. Everybody knew
that Elder Abraham had never been known to smile since he had been
appointed Superintendent of the Sunday School fourteen years
previously. But it hurt her that Minnie and Adella Clow did not wave
back. Faith liked Minnie and Adella. Next to the Blythes, they were her
best friends in school and she always helped Adella with her sums. This
was gratitude for you. Her friends cut her because she was shaking rugs
in an old graveyard where, as Mary Vance said, not a living soul had
been buried for years. Faith flounced around to the veranda, where she
found Una grieved in spirit because the Clow girls had not waved to
her, either.
“I suppose they’re mad over something,” said Faith. “Perhaps they’re
jealous because we play so much in Rainbow Valley with the Blythes.
Well, just wait till school opens and Adella wants me to show her how
to do her sums! We’ll get square then. Come on, let’s put the things
back in. I’m tired to death and I don’t believe the rooms will look
much better than before we started—though I shook out pecks of dust in
the graveyard. I _hate_ house-cleaning.”
It was two o’clock before the tired girls finished the two rooms. They
got a dreary bite in the kitchen and intended to wash the dishes at
once. But Faith happened to pick up a new story-book Di Blythe had lent
her and was lost to the world until sunset. Una took a cup of rank tea
up to Carl but found him asleep; so she curled herself up on Jerry’s
bed and went to sleep too. Meanwhile, a weird story flew through Glen
St. Mary and folks asked each other seriously what was to be done with
those manse youngsters.
“That is past laughing at, believe _me_,” said Miss Cornelia to her
husband, with a heavy sigh. “I couldn’t believe it at first. Miranda
Drew brought the story home from the Methodist Sunday School this
afternoon and I simply scoffed at it. But Mrs. Elder Abraham says she
and the Elder saw it with their own eyes.”
“Saw what?” asked Marshall.
“Faith and Una Meredith stayed home from Sunday School this morning and
_cleaned house_,” said Miss Cornelia, in accents of despair. “When
Elder Abraham went home from the church—he had stayed behind to
straighten out the library books—he saw them shaking rugs in the
Methodist graveyard. I can never look a Methodist in the face again.
Just think what a scandal it will make!”
A scandal it assuredly did make, growing more scandalous as it spread,
until the over-harbour people heard that the manse children had not
only cleaned house and put out a washing on Sunday, but had wound up
with an afternoon picnic in the graveyard while the Methodist Sunday
School was going on. The only household which remained in blissful
ignorance of the terrible thing was the manse itself; on what Faith and
Una fondly believed to be Tuesday it rained again; for the next three
days it rained; nobody came near the manse; the manse folk went
nowhere; they might have waded through the misty Rainbow Valley up to
Ingleside, but all the Blythe family, save Susan and the doctor, were
away on a visit to Avonlea.
“This is the last of our bread,” said Faith, “and the ditto is done. If
Aunt Martha doesn’t get better soon _what_ will we do?”
“We can buy some bread in the village and there’s the codfish Mary
dried,” said Una. “But we don’t know how to cook it.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” laughed Faith. “You just boil it.”
Boil it they did; but as it did not occur to them to soak it beforehand
it was too salty to eat. That night they were very hungry; but by the
following day their troubles were over. Sunshine returned to the world;
Carl was well and Aunt Martha’s misery left her as suddenly as it had
come; the butcher called at the manse and chased famine away. To crown
all, the Blythes returned home, and that evening they and the manse
children and Mary Vance kept sunset tryst once more in Rainbow Valley,
where the daisies were floating upon the grass like spirits of the dew
and the bells on the Tree Lovers rang like fairy chimes in the scented
twilight.