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"No Sir," I replied, and he went back to the Second Mate; while I walked forrard to the fo'cas'le to get something to eat. "Your whack's in the kettle, Jessop," said Tom, as I stepped in over the washboard. "An' I got your lime-juice in a pannikin." "Thanks," I said, and sat down. As I stowed away my grub, I took no notice of the chatter of the others. I was too stuffed with my own thoughts.
This harem was like a big stock barn in the states, with a big room to exercise the colts, and box stalls for the different wives and their families to live in and do their own cooking and washing. Instead of sitting by a bath playing a harp, the poor old wives stand by a washtub and play tunes on the washboard, and scrub, and take care of children.
In my early youth our house linen and our summer shirts and trousers were made from flax that grew on the farm. Those pioneer shirts, how vividly I remember them! They dated from the stump, and bits of the stump in the shape of "shives" were inwoven in their texture and made the wearer of them an unwilling penitent for weeks, or until use and the washboard had subdued them.
I kept looking afar, sweeping the three-quarter circle of horizon till my judgment of distance was confounded and my sense of proportion dwarfed one moment and magnified the next. Wetherill was pointing and explaining, but I had not grasped all he said. "You can see two hundred miles into Utah," he went on. "That bright rough surface, like a washboard, is wind-worn rock.
Daisy was not to be detained at home, and before ten o'clock she was down on Broadway, and the dolly with the "shash" and "pairesol" which she had seen the day before under its glass case was hers for twenty-five dollars, and the plainer bit of china, who was to be dollie's mother and perform the parental duty of "panking her when she was naughty," was also purchased, and the dishes and the table and stove and bedstead, with ruffled sheets and pillow-cases and blue satin spread and the washboard and clothes bars and tiny wringer, with divers others toys, were bought with a disregard of expense which made Miss McDonald a wonder to those who waited on her.
Mother Pepper had gone into the bedroom to tuck Phronsie away for the night, when Joel said triumphantly, "We know something, Dave and me, and we won't tell what 'tis." "All right," said Ben, coolly. "Polly, I guess I'll mend Mamsie's washboard. I shan't have another chance so good this week."
On the lee side another man could be seen stretched out as if stunned; only the washboard prevented him from going over the side. It was the steward. We had to sling him up like a bale, for he was paralysed with fright. He had rushed up out of the pantry when he felt the ship go over, and had rolled down helplessly, clutching a china mug. It was not broken.
Then there was Phebe, the strong-armed. A very important member of the family was she, as you would soon learn if you made any stay in the farmhouse. She it was who solved problems by the aid of washboard and scrubbing-brush, and the tempting meals she sent out of the kitchen would have delighted the heart of an epicure.
Mrs. Hollis herself, seen through the vista of opposite open doors, energetically rubbing the coarse wet clothes upon the resonant washboard, seemed neat enough in her blue-and-white checked homespun dress, and with her scanty hair drawn smoothly back from her brow into a tidy little knot on the top of her head. Spare and gaunt she was, and with many lines in her prematurely old face.
Redmond was not willing to own it, but he was actually frightened, as Leopold could see by the way he started when the boat pitched, and by the energy with which he held on to the washboard. "I don't know that I like this very well," said he, at last, with a sort of shudder. "It's perfectly splendid," exclaimed Belle. "Elegant," added Rosabel.
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