Mrs. Ripwinkley knew that Luclarion had more to say, and that she waited for this monosyllable.
"She's sick again. And Scarup, he's gone out West, spending a hundred dollars to see whether or no there's a chance anywhere for a smart man,—and that ain't he, so it's a double waste,—to make fifty. No girl; and the children all under foot, and Pinkie looking miserable over the dishes."
"Pinkie isn't strong."
"No. She's powerful weak. I just wish you'd seen that dirty settin'-room fire-place; looks as if it hadn't been touched since Scarup smoked his pipe there, the night before he went off a wild-gandering. And clo'es to be ironed, and the girl cleared out, because 'she'd always been used to fust-class families.' There wasn't anything to your hand, and you couldn't tell where to begin, unless you began with a cataplasm!"
Luclarion had heard, by chance, of a cataclysm, and that was what she meant.
"It wants—creation, over again! Mrs. Scarup hadn't any fit breakfast; there was burnt toast, made out of tough bread, that she'd been trying to eat; and a cup of tea, half drunk; something the matter with that, I presume. I'd have made her some gruel, if there'd been a fire; and if there'd been any kindlings, I'd have made her a fire; but there 'twas; there wasn't any bottom to it!"
"You had better make the gruel here, Luclarion."
"That's what I come back for. But—Mrs. Ripwinkley!"
"Well?"
"Don't it appear to you it's a kind of a stump? I don't want to do it just for the satisfaction; though it would be a satisfaction to plough everything up thorough, and then rake it over smooth; what do you think?"