After the china and glass were done and put up, came forth the coffee-pot and the two pans, and had their scald, and their little scour,—­a teaspoonful of sand must go to the daily cleansing of an iron utensil, in mother’s hands; and that was clean work, and the iron thing never got to be “horrid,” any more than a china bowl.  It was only a little heavy, and it was black; but the black did not come off.  It is slopping and burning and putting away with a rinse, that makes kettles and spiders untouchable.  Besides, mother keeps a bottle of ammonia in the pantry, to qualify her soap and water with, when she comes to things like these.  She calls it her kitchen-maid; it does wonders for any little roughness or greasiness; such soil comes off in that, and chemically disappears.

It was all dining-room work; and we were chatty over it, as if we had sat down to wind worsteds; and there was no kitchen in the house that morning.

We kept our butter and milk in the brick buttery at the foot of the kitchen stairs.  These were all we had to go up and down for.  Barbara set away the milk, and skimmed the cream, and brought up and scalded the yesterday’s pans the first thing; and they were out in a row—­flashing up saucily at the sun and giving as good as he sent—­on the back platform.

She and Rosamond were up stairs, making beds and setting straight; and in an hour after breakfast the house was in its beautiful forenoon order, and there was a forenoon of three hours to come.

We had chickens for dinner that day, I remember; one always does remember what was for dinner the first day in a new house, or in new housekeeping.  William, the chore-man, had killed and picked and drawn them, on Saturday; I do not mean to disguise that we avoided these last processes; we preferred a little foresight of arrangement.  They were hanging in the buttery, with their hearts and livers inside them; mother does not believe in gizzards.  They only wanted a little salt bath before cooking.

I should like to have had you see Mrs. Holabird tie up those chickens.  They were as white and nice as her own hands; and their legs and wings were fastened down to their sides, so that they were as round and comfortable as dumplings before she had done with them; and she laid them out of her two little palms into the pan in a cunning and cosey way that gave them a relish beforehand, and sublimated the vulgar need.

We were tired of sewing and writing and reading in three hours; it was only restful change to come down and put the chickens into the oven, and set the dinner-table.

Then, in the broken hour while they were cooking, we drifted out upon the piazza, and among our plants in the shady east corner by the parlor windows, and Ruth played a little, and mother took up the Atlantic, and we felt we had a good right to the between-times when the fresh dredgings of flour were getting their brown, and after that, while the potatoes were boiling.