HOW TO SWEEP.
In the first chapter of this story I spoke of the trouble housekeepers
in Bloomdale had to get and keep good servants.
We Clover Leaf girls made up our minds that we would learn to be
independent. We resolved to know how to do every sort of housework, so
that we might assist our mothers whenever they needed us, and be ready
for any emergency as it came along.
Aunt Hetty's daughter-in-law in Boston sent the poor old soul a letter
which made her rather uneasy, and grandmamma thought that I might better
let her go and pay Sally a visit while mother was away than to wait till
her return.
"The fall dressmaking and cleaning will be coming on then," said
grandmother, "and thee will be busy with school again. So if Hetty takes
her vacation now, she will be here to help the dear mother then."
I agreed to this, for the chance of having the kitchen to myself was
very tempting. The club was charmed; they said they would just live at
our house and help me with all their might.
"Then you won't have Hetty's moods to worry you," said Veva,
consolingly.
We had a good time. Nevertheless it was a happy day for me when Aunt
Hetty, bag and baggage, came home a week sooner than she was expected.
Nobody was looking for her; but the good old soul, having seen her
relations, felt restless, and wanted to get home.
"Somefin done tole me, honey," she said, "that Aunt Hetty am wanted
hyar, and sure enuf it's so. Yo' pa an' ma off on dey trabbles, and
nobody but one pore lamb lef' to take car' ob de house an' de ole madam.
I wouldn't hab gone only for dat no-account Sal anyhow."
I felt like a bird set free from a cage when Aunt Hetty appeared, and
she came in the very nick of time, too, for that same day up rolled the
stage, and out popped my great-aunt Jessamine (grandmamma's sister) from
Philadelphia. The two old ladies had so much to tell one another that
they had no need of me. So I went to the Downings', where the club was
to hold a meeting, armed with brushes and brooms, taking a practical
lesson in sweeping and dusting.
The Downings were without a maid, and we all turned in to help them.
Alice, Nell, and Clem, the older sisters, accepted our offer joyfully,
though I think their mother had doubts of the wisdom of setting so many
of us loose in her house at once. But Linda Curtis and Jeanie Cartwright
found that they were not needed and went home; Veva had a music lesson
and was excused; Linda's mamma had taken her off on a jaunt for the day;
and Amy could not be spared from home. Only Lois and I were left to help
Marjorie, and, on the principle that many hands make light work, we
distributed ourselves about the house under the direction of the elder
Downing sisters.
Now, girls all, let me give you a hint which may save you lots of time
and trouble. If sweeping and dusting are thoroughly done, they do not
need to be done so very often. A room once put in perfect order,
especially in a country village, where the houses stand like little
islands in a sea of green grass, ought to stay clean a long time.
It is very different in a city, where the dust flies in clouds an hour
after a shower, and where the carts and wagons are constantly stirring
it up. Give me the sweet, clean country.
Mother's way is to carefully dust and wipe first with a damp and then
with a dry cloth all the little articles of bric-a-brac, vases, small
pictures, and curios, which we prize because they are pretty, after
which she sets them in a closet or drawer quite out of the way. Then,
with a soft cloth fastened over the broom, she has the walls wiped down,
and with a hair brush which comes for the purpose she removes every
speck of dust and cobweb from the cornices and corners. A knitted cover
of soft lampwick over a broom is excellent for wiping a dusty or a
papered wall.
Next, all curtains which cannot be conveniently taken down are shaken
well and pinned up out of the way. Shades are rolled to the top. Every
chair and table is dusted, and carried out of the room which is about to
be swept. If there are books, they are dusted and removed, or if they
are arranged on open shelves, they are first dusted and then carefully
covered.
Mother's way is to keep a number of covers of old calico, for the
purpose of saving large pieces of furniture, shelves and such things,
which cannot be removed from their places on sweeping days.
It is easier, she says, to protect these articles than to remove the
dust when it has once lodged in carvings and mouldings.
We girls made a frolic of our dusting, but we did it beautifully too. I
suppose you have all noticed what a difference it makes in work whether
you go at it cheerfully or go at it as a task that you hate. If you keep
thinking how hard it is, and wishing you had somebody else to do it for
you, and fretting and fuming, and pitying yourself, you are sure to have
a horrid time. But if you take hold of a thing in earnest and call it
fun, you don't get half so tired.
In sweeping take long light strokes, and do not use too heavy a broom.
"Milly," said Lois, "do you honestly think sweeping is harder exercise
than playing tennis or golf?"
I hesitated. "I really don't know. One never thinks of hard or easy in
any games out of doors; the air is so invigorating, they have a great
advantage over house work in that way."
"Well, for my part," said Marjorie, "I like doing work that tells. There
is so much satisfaction in seeing the figures in the carpet come out
brightly under my broom. Alice, what did you do to make your
reception-room so perfectly splendiferous? Girls, look here! You'd think
this carpet had just come out of the warehouse."
"Mother often tells Aunt Hetty," said I, "to dip the end of the broom in
a pail of water in which she has poured a little ammonia--a teaspoonful
to a gallon. The ammonia takes off the dust, and refreshes the colors
wonderfully. We couldn't keep house without it," I finished, rather
proudly.
"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 coarse 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 glass 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 passages
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-knobs 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.