Veva said:  “I’d like to throw the dishes away after every meal.  If a fairy would offer me three wishes the first one I’d make would be never to touch a dishcloth again so long as I lived.”

“Oh, Veva!” exclaimed Marjorie.  “Think of the lovely china the Enderbys have, and the glass which came to Mrs. Curtis from her great-grandmother.  Would you like a piece of that to be broken if it were yours?”

“No-o-o!” acknowledged Veva.  “But our dishes are not so sacred, and our Bridgets break them regularly.  We are always having to buy new ones as it is.  Mamma groans, and sister Constance sighs, and Aunt Ernie scolds, but the dishes go.”

“Mother thinks that the old-fashioned gentlewomen, who used to wash the breakfast things themselves, were very sensible and womanly.”

Eva shrugged her plump shoulders, but took a towel to wipe the silver.  I had gathered up the dishes, and taken my own way of going about this piece of work.

First I took a pan of hot water in which I had dissolved a bit of soap, and I attacked the disagreeable things—­the saucepans and broilers and pots and pans.  They are very useful, but they are not ornamental.  All nice housekeepers are very particular to cleanse them thoroughly, removing every speck of grease from both the outside and the inside, and drying them until they shine.

It isn’t worth while to ruin your hands or make them coarse and rough when washing pots and pans.  I use a mop, and do not put my hands into the hot, greasy water.  Mother says one may do housework and look like a lady if she has common sense.

I finished the pots and pans and set my cups and saucers in a row, my plates scraped and piled together, my silver in the large china bowl, and my glasses were all ready for the next step.  I had two pans, one half-filled with soapy, the other with clear water, and having given my dainty dishes a bath in the first I treated them to a dip in the second, afterward letting them drain for a moment on the tray at my right hand.  Veva and Marjorie wiped the silver and glass with the soft linen towels which are kept for these only; next I took my plates, then the platters, and finally the knives.  Just as we finished the last dish I heard grandmother’s tap, tap on the floor over my head.

There’s an art in everything, even in washing dishes.  I fancy one might grow fond of it, if only one took an interest in always doing it well.

Perhaps it is because my parents are Friends, and I have been taught that it is foolish to be flurried and flustered and to hurry over any work, but I do think that one gets along much faster when one does not make too much haste.

I do hope I may always act just as mother does, she is so sweet and peaceful, never cross, never worried.  Now, dear grandmamma is much more easily vexed.  But then she is older and she has the Van Doren headaches.

Tap, tap came the call of the ebony stick.  I ran up to grandmamma’s room.