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"Holy Mary, be our aid!" interjected the horrified old lady. "I am aweary, Dame Agnes," said the child, laying herself down in the chair, as nearly at full length as its size would allow. I looked forth from the lattice this morrow, and I saw far down in the base court a little maid the bigness of me, washing of pans at a window.
The bed had been moved a number of times to find a dry spot, but at last two milk pans and a pail had to be placed on it. Drip, drip, rang the tins and it still rained. The mother went again to the door. The clang of cow-bells greeted her, and in a few minutes, a boy drove two cows into the shed. The mother held the door open while he came stamping into the house.
Moreover, there was a figure seated at the wooden table: the figure of a woman, who silently polished the spoons which were scattered before her. She had already scoured certain pots and pans which were piled in a heap near her hand. Suddenly the strange happenings began. A mouse appeared among the pots and pans on the table.
She led me through a room where were enormous barrels, ten feet in diameter, lying fatly on their sides; then through a large stone-clean kitchen, with bright pans, ancient as the Meistersinger; then up some steps and into the long guest-room, where a few tables were laid for supper. A few people were eating.
After a preliminary heating and skimming it is passed off into iron pans, several in a row, and boiled and skimmed, and ladled from one to the other till it reaches the last, which is nearest to the fire, and there it boils with the greatest violence, seething and foaming, bringing all the remaining scum to the surface.
Another bit of news was that the ladies of the Episcopal Church were going to give a strawberry festival in the Sunday School rooms on Wednesday evening, and all were cordially invited to attend and to bring their friends. Admission, twenty-five cents each. "This will be nice for us," remarked Zip, "for while Martha is away, we can steal into the milk cellar and lick the cream off the pans.
Low down in the iron door, close to the ground, is a tiny sliding panel a foot long by a few inches wide arranged like a double drawer, so that food and water may be slipped in on shallow pans and the refuse removed.
Upon the stove was a metal lamp burning dimly and emitting a cloud of smoke. One end of the table held a tin candlestick, where a meagre tallow-candle swaled away in the socket, and the table was littered with fragments of food in little round pans. An iron spoon or two, with three or four tin cups, lay amid this confusion.
Each of the little workers had a big earthen pan, and peeled incessantly the apples which the boys brought them. When the pans were full, they were carried away and others were brought. They had also to carry away the peels, or the girls would have been buried in them. Never was there such a peeling before. Not far away, the children were stoning the plums, cherries, and peaches.
Gleaming palely through the French window at which I was standing, the radiance revealed the deserted kitchen, the rusty stove, the dusty pans, and the tarnished water-tap above the stone sink. The hard, wooden crash of grenades broke upon my ears. My own room was lit by the yellow flame of a solitary candle, rising, untroubled by the slightest breath of wind, straight into the air.
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