After breakfast, the new nurse again made herself generally useful in
the kitchen, helped Sally, who was inclined to give out at the knees, to
"red up," washed dishes and swept the floor with a brisk celerity worthy
of all praise.
And then, it being wash-day, she whipped up her sleeves, displaying two
lusty, round arms, and fell to with a will among the soiled linens and
steaming soap-suds.
"I may as well do something," she said, brusquely, in answer to Mrs.
Oleander's very faint objections; "there's nothing to do upstairs, and
she doesn't want me. She only calls me names."
So Mrs. Susan Sharpe rubbed, and wrung, and soaped, and pounded, and
boiled, and blued for three mortal hours, and then there was a huge
basket of clothes all ready to go on the line.
"Now, ma'am," said this priceless treasure, "if you'll just show me the
clothes-line, I'll hang these here out."
Mrs. Oleander pointed to two long ropes strung at the lower end of the
back yard, and Susan Sharpe, hoisting the basket, set off at once to
hang them to dry.
The two old women watched her from the window with admiring eyes.
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