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One bright morning, when all the bed and table linen, and every bleachable thing to be found in the house, were spread upon the grass; when feather beds and blankets, and carpets, were hung out to air; when soap-suds and white-wash stood side by side; when the china closet had disgorged its treasures, and the silver was spread out for extra polishing; when all the ingredients for a mammoth fruit cake were marshalled on the kitchen table; when chairs and other furniture were gathered in clusters, as if discussing the general uproar; when poor old Lilly Foot had been driven forth with a sharp reproof and a cold breakfast, and forlorn kitty, hid away in a dark corner, where only her green eyes were visible, mewed disconsolate, a loud knock was heard at the door.
It is likewise further advised as a precautionary measure, that, before the frames and lights, which are to contain plants of this sort, are employed, they should be well washed, both inside and out, first with clean water, and then with a mixture of soap-suds and urine; a brush or woollen rag being made use of in the operation; as by this method the ova or eggs of the spiders or other insects that may have been deposited and lodged in or on them, in the preceding season, may be cleared away and destroyed.
If I prayed harder to have more sense and not talk so much, and not say what I think about people, and not hate my ugly clothes so, and despise the smell of onions and cabbage and soap-suds, I might get more answers, but you can't get answers just by praying. You've got to work like the mischief, and be a regular policeman over yourself and nab the bad things the minute they poke their heads out.
In a moment the great, rainbow-tinted bubble of her hope and imagination had burst, leaving only a bitter and unpleasant sense of the paltry and unclean materials the soap-suds and clay-pipe wherewith it had been created.
She had rolled down her sleeves and tied a white apron around her waist, and she stood making folds in it with fingers that were red and shiny from her soap-suds. "Well, Mary," I said encouragingly, "what's the matter? Don't dare to tell me the soap is out." "No, ma'm, Miss Innes."
"Think of going all the way to India just to plunge your arms into the spooky, foamy Ganges and 'make a wish'! 'What do you wish? asks Father, pleased-as a Chessy-puss. Humph! I wish it was the soap-suds in my own wash-tub! Or gallivanting down to British Guiana just to smell the great blowsy water-lilies in the canals! I'd rather smell burned crackers in my own cook stove!"
Various mustachioed far niente looking figures, wrapped cap-a-pie in dressing gowns, lolled out of the first floor corridor, and smoked their chibouques with unusual activity, while the ground floor was occupied by German washer-women and their soap-suds; three of the arcades being festooned with shirts and drawers hung up to dry, and stockings, with apertures at the toes and heels for the free circulation of the air.
They'd be smoking their pipes that smelled to Heaven, and further, and Wing would be squealing one of his creepy old Chink songs out in the kitchen, and the sky would be say, Miss Meron, did you ever see the night sky, out West? Purple, you know, and soft as soap-suds, and so near that you want to reach up and touch it with your hand.
It was a young woman, with as many white muslin flounces round her as the planet Saturn has rings, that did it. She gave the music-stool a twirl or two and fluffed down on to it like a whirl of soap-suds in a hand-basin. Then she pushed up her cuffs as if she was going to fight for the champion's belt.
Her fingers were white and wrinkled with washing, and the soap-suds were yet smoking which she wiped off her arms. But for this, she might have been a child playing at washing and imitating a poor working-woman with a quick observation of the truth. She had come running from some place in the neighbourhood and had made all the haste she could.
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