Ah, you should have seen her then! She washed the dishes and put
them away in the cupboard, she skimmed the milk and put the cream
into the churn, she swept the hearth and shook the blankets out
of doors in the fresh morning air. Then she made the beds, and
when the kitchen was all in order, she "went ben"--that was the
way they spoke of the best room--and dusted that too. There
wasn't really a bit of need of dusting the room, for it was
never, never used except on very important occasions, such as
when the minister called. The little house was five miles from
the village, so the minister did not come often, but Jean kept it
clean all the time just to be on the safe side.
There wasn't so very much work to do in the room after all, for
there was nothing in it but the fireplace, a little table with
the Bible, the Catechism, and a copy of Burns's poems on it, and
three chairs. The kitchen was a different matter: There were the
beds, and they were hard for a small girl to manage, and the
cupboard with its shelves of dishes. There were three stools, and
a big chair for the Shepherd, and the great chest where the
clothes were kept, and besides all these things there was the wag-
at-the-wall clock on the mantel-shelf which had to be wound every
Saturday night.
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