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Updated: May 14, 2025
She extended to me a moist palm on which lay a thick slice of bread spread with cold veal gravy. "This," said she, "is to stay ye till tea-time; an' now let me git back to me scrubbin' or the suds'll be all dried up on me." But I caught her apron and held her fast. "Oh, don't go, Mary Ellen!" I begged, "I've something awfully interesting to tell you. Do sit down!" "I will not thin.
Who'd look after Mis' McGinty's seven babies, when she goes a scrubbin' the station floors, if you wasn't here? Who'd help the tailor with his job when the fits of coughin' get so bad? 'Twas only a spell ago he was showin' me how't you'd sewed in the linin' to a coat he was too sick to finish an' a praisin' the stitches beautiful.
Say, while I was scrubbin' off some of the inkstains and smoothin' down my hair with the silver-backed brushes I felt like a young blood gettin' ready for a party. Then after awhile I strolls down to the lib'ry and makes myself to home some more. It's a comf'table place, with lots of big easy-chairs, nice pictures on the wall, and no end of bookshelves.
There's just three husbands among the fifteen women scrubbin' here now, and the rest of us is all old maids and widders. No wonder the men-folks die, or move away, like Justin Peabody; a place with such a mess o' women-folks ain't healthy to live in, whatever Lobelia Brewster may say."
Eddie shook his head wearily. "I wish I could believe you," he said. "I ben figgerin' on goin' back to see maw. I ain't thought o' nothin' else since you told me 'bout how she missed me. I ken see her right now just like I was there. I'll bet she's scrubbin' the kitchen floor. Maw was always a-scrubbin' somethin'. Gee! but it's tough to cash in like this just when I was figgerin' on goin' home."
The seat back o' 'Squire Bean's is the old Peabody pew ain't that the Peabody pew you're scrubbin', Nancy?" "I believe so," Nancy answered, never pausing in her labors. "It's so long since anybody sat there, it's hard to remember." "It is the Peabodys', I know it, because the aisle runs right up facin' it. I can see old Deacon Peabody settin' in this end same as if 't was yesterday."
Wilkins, ironing rapidly as she spoke, "that folks is very like clothes, and a sight has to be done to keep 'em clean and whole. All on us has to lend a hand in this dreadful mixed-up wash, and each do our part, same as you and me is now. There's scrubbin' and bilin', wrenchin' and bluein', dryin' and foldin', ironin' and polishin', before any of us is fit for wear a Sunday mornin'."
Of course, our English sisters may have more reason for their militant doin's; more unjust laws regarding marriage divorce, and care of children, and I can't blame them married females for wantin' to control their own money, specially if they earnt it by scrubbin' floors and washin'. I can't blame 'em for not wantin' their husbands to take that money from them and their children, specially if they're loafers and drunkards.
"I reckon you think, child, that a caliker or a worsted quilt is a curious sort of a monument 'bout as perishable as the sweepin' and scrubbin' and mendin'. But if folks values things rightly, and knows how to take care of 'em, there ain't many things that'll last longer'n a quilt.
It seems Ma Stribble was still shovelin' most of the ashes and scrubbin' the halls as well; while Pa Stribble, fatter than ever and in the same greasy old togs, continues to camp in a rickety arm chair by the front window, with a pail of suds at his right elbow. Yes, the one mentioned in the casualty list was their Jimmy. Only he hadn't come back a trench hero, exactly.
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