“You’ll have to mix it up with dish-washing,” said Elise.  “Dish-washing and dust,—­you can’t get rid of them!”

“We do, though!” said Kate, alertly, jumping up and beginning to fetch the plates and cups from the dumb-waiter.  “Here, Bel!” And she tossed three or four long, soft, clean towels over to her from the shelf beside the china.

“And about that dusting,” she went on, after the noise of the hot water rushing from the faucet was over, and she began dropping the things carefully down through the cloud of steam into the great pan full of suds, and fishing them up again with a fork and a little mop,—­“about the dusting, I didn’t finish.  It’s a work of art to dust Mrs. Scherman’s parlor.  Don’t you think there’s a pleasure in handling and touching up and setting out all those pretty things?  Don’t they get to be a part of our having, too?  Don’t I take as much comfort in her fernery as she does?  I know every little green and woolly loop that comes up in it.  It’s the only sense there is in things.  There’s a picture there, of cows coming home, down a green lane, and the sun striking through, and lighting up the gravel, and a patch of green grass, and the red hair on the cows’ necks.  You think you just catch it coming, suddenly, through the trees, when you first look up at it.  And you go right into a little piece of the country, and stand there.  Mr. Scherman doesn’t own that lane, or those cows, though he bought the picture.  All he owns is what he gets by the signs; and I get that, every day, for the dusting!  There are things to be earned and shared where people live, that you can’t earn in the sewing-shops.”

“That’s what Bel said.  Well, I’m glad you like it.  Sha’n’t I wipe up some of those cups?”

“They’re all done now,” said Bel, piling them together.

In fifteen minutes after their own tea was ended, the kitchen was in order again; the dumb-waiter, with its freight, sent up to the china closet; the brown linen cloth and the napkins folded away in the drawer, and the white-topped table ready for evening use.  Bel Bree had not been brought up in a New England farm-house, and seen her capable stepmother “whew round,” to be hard put to it, now, over half a dozen cups and tumblers more or less.

“We must go,” said Elise Mokey.  “I’ve got the buttons to sew on to those last night-gowns of Miss Ledwith’s.  I want to carry them back to-morrow.”

“You’re lucky to sew for her,” said Bel.  “But you see we all have to do for somebody, and I’d as lief it would be teacups, for my part, as buttons.”

Bel Bree’s old tricks of rhyming were running in her head.  This game of Crambo—­a favorite one with the Schermans and their bright little intimate circle—­stirred up her wits with a challenge.  And under the wits,—­under the quick mechanic action of the serving brain,—­thoughts had been daily crowding and growing, for which these mere mental facilities were waiting, the ready instruments.