"I wrote some little books;
I said some little says;
I preached a little preach;
I lit a little blaze;
I made things pleasant in one little place."
There was a shout at Barbara's "poem."
"I thought I might as well relieve my mind," she said, meekly. "I knew it was all there would ever be of it."
But Barbara's rhyme stayed in our heads, and got quoted in the family. She illustrated on a small scale what the "poems and articles" may sometimes do in the great world,
We remembered it that day when Ruth said, "Let's co-operate."
We talked it over,—what we could do without a girl. We had talked it over before. We had had to try it, more or less, during interregnums. But in our little house in Z——, with the dark kitchen, and with Barbara and Ruth going to school, and the washing-days, when we had to hire, it always cost more than it came to, besides making what Barb called a "heave-offering of life."
"They used to have houses built accordingly," Rosamond said, speaking of the "old times." "Grandmother's kitchen was the biggest and pleasantest room in the house."
"Couldn't we make the kitchen the pleasantest room?" suggested Ruth. "Wouldn't it be sure to be, if it was the room we all stayed in mornings, and where we had our morning work? Whatever room we do that in always is, you know. The look grows. Kitchens are horrid when girls have just gone out of them, and left the dish-towels dirty, and the dish-cloth all wabbled up in the sink, and all the tins and irons wanting to be cleaned. But if we once got up a real ladies' kitchen of our own! I can think how it might be lovely!"
"I can think how it might be jolly-nificent!" cried Barbara, relapsing into her dislocations.
"You like kitchens," said Rosamond, in a tone of quiet ill-usedness.