A CHAPTER ON HOUSEKEEPING.
I never could see the reason why your smart housekeepers must, of necessity, be Xantippes. I once had the misfortune to be domesticated during the summer months with one of this genus.
I should like to have seen the adventurous spider that would have dared to ply his cunning trade in Mrs. Carrot’s premises! Nobody was allowed to sleep a wink after daylight, beneath her roof. Even her old rooster crowed one hour earlier than any of her neighbours’. “Go ahead,” was written on every broomstick in the establishment.
She gave her husband his breakfast, buttoned up his overcoat, and put him out of the front door, with his face in the direction of the store, in less time than I have taken to tell it. Then she snatched up the six little Carrots; scrubbed their faces, up and down, without regard to feelings or noses, till they shone like a row of milk pans.
“Clear the track,” was her motto, on washing and ironing days. She never drew a long breath till the wash-tubs were turned bottom upwards again, and every article of wearing apparel sprinkled, folded, ironed, and replaced on the backs of their respective owners. It gave me a stitch in the side to look at her!
As to her “cleaning days,” I never had courage to witness one. I used to lie under an apple-tree in the orchard, till she was through. A whole platoon of soldiers wouldn’t have frightened me so much as that virago and her mop.
You should have seen her in her glory on “baking days;” her sleeves rolled up to her arm-pits, and a long, check apron swathed around her bolster-like figure. The great oven glowing, blazing, and sparkling, in a manner very suggestive, to a lazy sinner like myself. The interminable rows of greased pie-plates; the pans ofrough and ready gingerbread; the pots of pork and beans, in an edifying state of progression; and the immense embryo loaves of brown and wheaten bread. To my innocent inquiry, whether she thought the latter would “rise,” she set her skinny arms akimbo, marched up within kissing distance of my face, cocked her head on one side, and asked “if I thought she looked like a woman to be trifled with by a loaf of bread!” The way I settled down into my slippers, without a reply, probably convinced her that I was no longer sceptical on that point.
Saturday evening she employed in winding up everything that was unwound in the house—the old entry clock included. From that time till Monday morning, she devoted to her husband and Sabbatical exercises. All I have to say is, it is to be hoped she carried some of the fervour of her secular employment into those halcyon hours.