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The truth is that middle-class domesticity, instead of setting cottage women on the road to middle-class culture of mind and body, has side-tracked them has made of them charwomen and laundresses, so that other women may shirk these duties and be "cultured."
She reviewed their little journeys to and fro, to Walworth, to charwomen with bad legs, to meetings for this and that, their minute acts of charity and unselfishness which flowered punctually from a definite view of what they ought to do, their friendships, their tastes and habits; she saw all these things like grains of sand falling, falling through innumerable days, making an atmosphere and building up a solid mass, a background.
As usual the society was broken up into very small cliques; no one household feeling itself exactly on the same social equality as another; even as far down as the laundresses and charwomen, who could tell whose husband or son had been before the justices, and which families had escaped that disgrace.
An army of charwomen, turned into the hotel, scrubbed it from top to bottom. A vacuum cleaner, the first seen in Mariposa, hissed and screamed in the corridors. Forty brass beds were imported from the city, not, of course, for the guests to sleep in, but to keep them out. A bar-tender with a starched coat and wicker sleeves was put behind the bar. The loafers were put out of business.
I thort I heerd a scritch, each, from Cleopatra Betsy to Hetta Mary, were constantly rushing in to inquire, or to present questionable dainties and nostrums from their respective 'Mas'; the charwomen, whom Minna had coaxed in her blandest manner to save trouble to Averil and disgust to Henry, were officious in volunteers of nursing and sitting up, the black cook at the hotel sent choice fabrics of jelly and fragrant ice; and even Henry's rival, who had been so strong against the insolence of a practitioner showing no testimonials, no sooner came under the influence of the yearning, entreating, but ever-patient eyes, than his attendance became assiduous, his interest in the case ardent.
Bread was getting scarce with them; the two sisters went out as charwomen, but earned little, and he, Jacques Randel, the strongest of them all, did nothing because he had nothing to do, and ate the others' soup.
The lack of space, of light, and of air outweighed all considerations of charm and originality; the upper staircase alone would have ruined any flat for Mr. Prohack. "Isn't it lovely!" Sissie encouraged him. "Yes, it is," he said feebly. "Got any servants yet?" "Oh! We can't have servants. No room for them to sleep, and I couldn't stand charwomen.
He did not, when he came suddenly to town in this manner, stop at his own house, which was, on such occasions, given over to charwomen and tradespeople of all descriptions; but he put up at an old-fashioned family hotel where, on that especial evening, he asked me to dine with him. Over dessert he opened his mind to me on the subject of the "Uninhabited House."
Field-work, which fostered a blowsy carelessness, has declined, and at the same time the arrival of "residents" has greatly increased the demand for charwomen and washerwomen. The women, therefore, find it worth while to cultivate a certain tidiness in their persons, which extends to their homes.
Charwomen were got in, and spring cleanings on a gigantic scale took place, so that when Rossiter did return he thought it had never looked so nice, or his Linda been so cheery and companionable. But before this happy confirmation of her wisdom in engaging Nance Adams as maid and factotum, Mrs. Rossiter had several waves of doubt and distress to breast. There was the Suffrage question.
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