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Sally, his wife, took care of the household, which, indeed, was a light and comfortable task, since the table was well supplied for her own sake, and there was no sharp eye to criticise her sweeping, dusting, and bed-making.
The three girls slept in the bedroom which opened off the living-room; the boys and Roger carried their beds into the second tent, or under the trees, or into the boat-house, as fancy suggested, and the wind favoured. Then blankets were unrolled, and the business of bed-making went on merrily.
He was turned sixty years of age, and of course had seen many and great changes in Plymouth during his time, yet, although well advanced in the "sere and yellow," was still a hale and hearty man, able to do a hard day's work against the best individual in his yard; and although he had the reputation of being wealthy he lived alone in a little four-roomed cottage occupying one corner of his yard, and did everything cooking, washing-up, bed-making, etcetera, etcetera, for himself, with the assistance of a woman who came, for one day a week, to clean house, and wash and mend for him.
"And still thee continues such unbecoming and vastly indelicate behaviour." "Oh, mommy, but it is so nice!" cried the girl. "Did n't you like to sit on the floor when you were fifteen?" "Janice, thou 't more careless every day in bed-making," ejaculated Mrs. Meredith, making a sudden dive toward the bed, as if she desired to escape the question.
It seems to be a point of etiquette to show as much of the interiors as possible, and one can learn something of cooking and bed-making and mending, and the art of doing up the back hair. The photographer revels here in pictorial opportunities. The pictures of these bizarre cottages, with the family and friends seated in front, show very serious groups.
It is not so irksome a duty as in a standing camp, but has its trying moments; for instance, when drivers are busied with bed-making or cocoa-cooking in the evening, and are deaf to your shouts of "D drivers, roll up for your feeds!" a camp-cry which has not half the effect of "Roll up for your coffee!" or, more electrical still, "Roll up for your rum!" July 5.
Sometimes in the late evening one walks busily up and down the ward doing this and that, forgetting that there is anything beyond the drawn blinds, engrossed in the patients, one's tasks bed-making, washing, one errand and another and then suddenly a blind will blow out and almost up to the ceiling, and through it you will catch a glimpse that makes you gasp, of a black night crossed with bladed searchlights, of a moon behind a crooked tree.
True, her life is hard, she has no home comforts; but, then, she has no heavy duties to perform, no housework, bed-making, sweeping, dish-washing, or clothes-washing, and when her work is done, she is her own mistress. She goes and comes at her own will; she has time for self-improvement, but best of all she has something to look forward to.
You can no more be a woman without needlework than you can be a man without mischief it's born in you, child, the same as bed-making is, and cleaning stoves, and washing floors, and minding babies, and coddling husbands, and bearing all the smaller worries of life they are all born in a woman, Alison, and she can no more escape 'em than she can escape wearing the wedding-ring when she goes to church to be wed."
Day after day she plodded through a heavy program of breakfast, dinner, supper, bed-making, sweeping, and the care of the chickens and pigs; her calendar was the added duties that each morning entailed of washing, ironing, mending, scrubbing, and baking. The promise of the colonel's son came to cheer her sometimes; but it was a peep into the tin spice-box each evening that heartened her most.
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