WASH-DAY AT MRS. WOPP’S.
“As the door creaketh on his hinges, so the slugger turneth on his
bed.” Liza Wopp’s voice was compelling in its significance. Through
the rose-lit dreams of Moses, the sound and the awful words were like
the threatenings of an approaching storm.
“Yeh Mar, I’m comin’.”
Moses’ teeth chattered. It was not cold, but wash-day meant to the
unhappy boy a dismal round of duties.
“Oh Mosey,” cried Betty at the breakfast table, being first on the
scene to arrange her flowers, “we’ll hev a spellin’ match to-day I
bet.”
“Don’t care a doughnut,” answered Moses defiantly, “I’d ruther turn
the washin’ machine any day than stand like a goose spellin’ words any
arss can spell.”
Betty playfully thrust a small forefinger into one of the fresh
biscuits on the table and bore it, impaled on the rosy weapon,
triumphantly to her plate. This was for the amusement of Moses, but
instead of laughing as he was expected to do, he eyed his little
sister with assumed indifference.
“You carnt spell so smart anyways,” he ventured. Betty turned her
piquant nose up at him and suddenly bounced up from the table.
“Oh, poor li’l Nancy wants in!” She raised the window and gently
lifted the cat into the room. Running to her place at the table, she
poured half of her cup of milk into a saucer and set it in a sunny
spot on the floor.
“There Nancy,” she whispered, “is a sunbeam for breakfast dipped in
milk.”
The sunbeam somehow got into the internal decorations of Nancy and
filtered out through her eyes. Their amber depths seemed to have
turned into liquid gold.
Jethro, lying on a mat at the door, was contentedly gnawing a bone.
Nancy, having finished her milk, and still enjoying its flavor from
her whiskers, as Betty remarked, stealthily approached her canine
playmate. A slight altercation took place concerning the ownership of
the bone. It was not long before Jethro walked out of the room,
perceptibly toeing in, and probably reflecting that life was too short
to wrangle over a bare bone anyway.
Mrs. Wopp was too busy to eat breakfast in the orthodox fashion. She
could be heard in the kitchen preparing for the trying ordeal of
wash-day. Out in the yard the head of the house was busy feeding the
fowl.
Clank! Clank! Clank!
The sound was an ominous warning to Moses, to finish his breakfast
with all possible speed.
“Good-by Dad and Mar and Mosey,” called Betty as she sped down the
path toward the school-house.
Moses heaved a sigh, as he entered the kitchen and took his stand at
the washing-machine. One hundred and thirty-seven times that
diabolical barrel had to be turned before the dirt accumulated by the
Wopp family during the week could be obliterated.
The chinking began in earnest. Moses stood, turning till each freckle
on his ruddy face shone with honest sweat.
“Now Moses,” announced his mother, “Jist for a change an’ rest like,
turn this here separator.”
Another sound in a somewhat higher key was heard. Moses had simply
modulated in his domestic symphony of labor from a major task to a
minor one. As a change and refreshing recreation, Moses was allowed to
turn the small wheat-mill. Ninety soul-stirring turns it required to
empty the hopper once, and he must turn out enough flour for a batch
of bread. His youthful soul was in revolt at such servitude. He had no
sympathy to squander on the children of Israel in bondage vile. Making
bricks for Pharoah was infantile amusement compared to his labor.
“The Lord loveth a cheerful liver, Moses,” said his mother
encouragingly, as she saw the growing acidity of the boy’s
countenance. Mrs. Wopp had never forgotten a certain missionary
service, during which she had studied a text in gold lettering of old
English type on the wall. The uncertain light of stained glass falling
on the last word had made it difficult to read. But at last realizing
that a sound liver and cheerfulness are closely associated, she had
seen no incongruity in her translation of the text.
“All this turnin’ is good for the liver too you know,” she continued,
as her son’s vinegary expression remained unaltered.
“Yeh,” scoffed Moses, “this here turnin’ machines every Monday makes
me sick. I aint got no liver left to be cheerful.”
Mrs. Wopp was much too energetically engaged to enter into fuller
argument. She busied herself preparing the tubs for rinsing, singing
in a high tremolo, “Shall we gather at the river?”
“Now Moses,” she called at the end of the third verse, “git the water
for the rinsin’.” The clanking lessened and slowly died down to a
complaining rumble. It might have been some monster suffering from
indigestion.
Mrs. Wopp’s eagle eye, again rested on the lowering face of her
offspring.
“Moses iny boy, yer bile must be riz; this very night you git a dose
of physic.” Moses lower lip dropped lower and lower.
“Take care ole boy, you’ll trip on yer lip in another minute.”
Moses, his feelings by this time wrought to a state of down-right
rebellion, grasped a pail in either hand and sought the peaceful
atmosphere of the river.
When Betty returned from school in the afternoon, she beheld snowy
billowing apparel on the clothes-line. Mrs. Wopp, being very thrifty
in the matter of using up flour and sugar sacks for underwear, had a
motley collection of garments suspended by wooden pegs. A night-shirt
of Mr. Wopp’s bore the inscription “Three Roses” dimly outlined in
pink, while on the southern portion of a pair of more intimate
garments could be discerned, fading into palest blue. “Great Western
Mills.” The wind was causing a riotous time among the cheerful array
of reconstructed sacks, and as Betty ran down the path singing “Twenty
froggies went to school,” a sugar sack sleeve of Moses’ shirt embraced
a flour sack bosom of his father’s undergarment; and “Pure Cane Sugar“
saluted “Ogiveme’s Mills.” Betty cheerfully performed her task of
bringing in the clothes saturated with wind and sunshine. She thought
the sweetest smell in the world next to morning-glories and
nasturtiums was the smell of clean clothes fresh from the line.
“They smell like the sunbeams was sprinklin’ them with scent,” she
declared as she and Moses brought the last basketful into the house.
Mrs. Wopp’s nightgown of ample proportions was left out a little
longer being still somewhat damp.
As she went about her work, Betty’s braids of fair hair tied with
wisps of faded red ribbon stood out stiffly from her head. Her
eyebrows were not quite grown in yet and she presented a comical
appearance blinking in the sun as she regarded Moses who was helping
her.
“Gee! Betty,” laughed the boy, “yer eyes look orful yet, this is the
fust good shake my sides hev felt to-day, it’s jist been ’orrible the
way Mar was jawred.”
The basket piled high with snowy linen and cotton seemed almost to
overflow the brim. Betty pressed the clothes down with her brown
hands, while the complaining boy enlarged on the sordid details of
that trying wash-day and on the manner in which his mother had teased
him. The child’s sense of humor outbalanced even her sympathy and a
peal of laughter rang out. Her laugh was a long delicious trill, as
though a bird had dropped from the clouds singing still with the
sunrise tangled in its notes. Moses paused long enough for a
procession of commas and semicolons to pass by. Then seeing his
disappointment in her apparent lack of sympathy, Betty hastened to
console him.
“Never mind Mosey, Next Monday I’m goin’ to ask Mar to let me stay
home and turn the nasty mouldy machine.”
“Oh no Betty,” Moses tones were of an elder-brotherly authority, “yer
li’l han’s aint meant fer sich servitood. I’d not stan’ by an’ see you
do that.” With all his teasing at times, Moses adored his little
foster-sister. He idealized her, and as Mrs. Wopp had often remarked,
whenever Betty left his presence he saw her ascend into heaven in a
“Whirlwin’ of fire, an’ go-cart of flame.”
As that energetic lady bustled about the kitchen the same evening
setting the bread, her voice rose in a series of trills and other
embellishments as she sang “Where is my wanderin’ boy to-night?”
Balancing her voice on a very high note she popped her head through
the dining-room door to speak to her husband. He was seated at the
table reading “The Family Herald.” His straggling grey locks were
disordered with his mental effort and formed a frieze of irregular
design on his shining forehead. Mrs. Wopp’s voice, in a moment, was
safe on terra firma.
“Ebenezer, you might bring in my slumber robe, bein’s I’m so busy an’
Mose an’ Betty’s gone to bed.”
“All right Lize, I’ll jist make a note of that.”
There was room on the slip of paper for only this last item, so
numerous had been the demands, during this busy day, on Mr. Wopp’s
memory.
He returned his notes to his pocket with the assurance of one whose
unreliable memory has been fortified and rendered infallible.
Nevertheless the voluminous folds of Eliza Wopp’s cotton nightgown
fluttered all night under the starry heavens.