In Homespun | Page 5

'that there's not a stick in the house been dusted yet--no, nor a stair
swep'.'
So I set to to clean the house, which was cleaner than most people's
already, and I got a nice bit of dinner and took it up on a tray. But no,
that wasn't right, for I'd put the best instead of the second-best cloth on
the tray.
'The workhouse is where you'll end,' says aunt.
But she ate up all the dinner, and after that she seemed to get a little

easier in her temper, and by-and-by fell off to sleep.
I finished the stairs and tidied up the kitchen, and then I went to dust
the parlour.
Now, my aunt's parlour was a perfect moral. I have never seen its like
before or since. The mantelpiece and the corner cupboard, and the
shelves behind the door, and the top of the chest of drawers and the
bureau were all covered up with a perfect litter and lurry of old china.
Not sets of anything, but different basins and jugs and cups and plates
and china spoons and the bust of John Wesley and Elijah feeding the
ravens in a red gown and standing on a green crockery grass plot.
There was every kind of china uselessness that you could think of; and
Sarah and I used to think it hard that a girl had no chance of getting on
in life without she dusted all this rubbish once a week at the least.
'Well, the sooner begun the sooner ended,' says I to myself So I took
the silk handkerchief that aunt kep' a purpose--an old one it was that
had belonged to uncle, and hemmed with aunt's own hair and marked
with his name in the corner. (Folks must have had a deal of time in
those days, I often think.) And I began to dust the things, beginning
with the big bowl on the chest of drawers, for aunt always would have
everything done just one way and no other.
You think, perhaps, that I might as well have sat down in the arm-chair
and had a quiet nap and told aunt afterwards that I had dusted
everything; but you must know she was quite equivalent to asking any
of the neighbours who might drop in whether that dratted china of hers
was dusted properly.
It was a hot afternoon, and I was tired and a bit cross.
'Aunts, and uncles, and grandmothers,' thinks I to myself. 'O what a
stupid old lot they must have been to have set such store by all this
gimcrackery! Oh, if only a bull or something could get in here for five
minutes and smash every precious--oh, my cats alive!'
I don't know how I did it, but just as I was saying that about the bull,
the big bowl slipped from my hands and broke in three pieces on the
floor at my feet, and at the same moment I heard aunt thump, thump,
thumping with the heel of her boot on the floor for me to go up and tell
her what I had broken. I tell you I wished from my heart at that moment
that it was me that had had the quinsy instead of Sarah.
I was so knocked all of a heap that I couldn't move, and the boot went

on thump, thump, thumping overhead. I had to go, but I was flustered
to that degree that as I went up the stairs I couldn't for the life of me
think what I should say.
Aunt was sitting up in bed, and she shook her fist at me when I went in.
'Out with it!' she said. 'Speak the truth. Which of them is it? The yallar
china dish, or the big teapot, or the Wedgwood tobaccojar that
belonged to your grandfather?'
And then all in a minute I knew what to say. The words seemed to be
put into my mouth, like they were into the prophets of old.
'Lord, aunt!' I said, 'you give me quite a turn, battering on the floor that
way. What do you want? What is it?'
'What have you broken, you wicked, heartless girl? Out with it, quick!'
'Broken?' I says. 'Well, I hope you won't mind much, aunt, but I have
had a misfortune with the little cracked pie-dish that the potatopie was
baked in; but I can easy get you another down at Wilkins.'
Aunt fell back on her pillows with a sort of groan.
'Thank them as be!' she said, and then she sat up again, bolt upright all
in a minute.
'You fetch me the pieces,' she says, short and sharp.
I hope it isn't boastful to say that I don't think many girls would have
had the sense