“You can clear away the table, girls—come, be spry,”—she said, rising with a great air of alacrity herself; but she had a heavy heart, as she took up her knitting from the side-table, and sat down in her low arm-chair in the corner of the fireplace. Mr. Gilman followed and squared himself on the other side, leaning his elbows on his knees, with a show of obstinate determination, as he looked from his wife to the fire.
“Mustn’t we wait for Sam?” asked Hannah, who had already seized on volume second of her beloved history. She had a natural disinclination to household tasks, an indolence inherited from her father, and but partly excused to the notable Mrs. Gilman, by the love of reading, which kept her out of mischief.
“No; Sam knows when we have tea, and the table can’t be kept waiting for him.”
“He don’t deserve any, I’m sure,” Abby was quite ready to add. “I hate to strain the milk after dark, and he knows it, and stays away just to plague me. Come, Hannah, take the bread into the buttery, while I pile up the things. You know it’s your week for putting away, and you try to get things off on other people. Mother—mustn’t Hannah come and help me?”
The book was reluctantly closed, and Hannah’s tardy step made a slow accompaniment to her sister’s bustling movements. There was much more clatter than was necessary in piling up the four cups and saucers, emptying the tea tray, folding the cloth, and setting back the table. It was quite a picture to see the handy little housewife, tucking back her dress and apron, as she dexterously carried the still smoking tea-kettle into the buttery, and filled a large milk pan with clean hot water, while Hannah expended all her energies in reaching down a towel and preparing to dry the few dishes.
The buttery, a long wide closet at one end of the kitchen, added very much to the neatness of the family sitting-room. It was Abby’s especial pride to keep the sink, the numerous pails and buckets, in order, and the one low window as clear as hands could make it. Hannah, though a year the eldest, hated the buttery, and always made her escape as soon as possible. To use her own favorite word—she “hated” washing dishes, and dusting, and peeling potatoes, in fact, every thing like work. She liked reading and walking in the woods, especially in spring-time, making wreaths of wild flowers, and fanciful cups and baskets from the twigs and leaves, Hannah’s imagination was already captured by these wonderful golden visions. Plenty of money, stood for plenty of time to do just as she pleased. Her mother could not be always telling her, “you must learn to be industrious, for you are a poor man’s child, and have got to make your own way in the world.”
“I hope father will go to California,” was the first symptom of consciousness she showed, while Abby splashed away in the water, regardless of scalded hands and mottled elbows.
“My goodness, Hannah! do see what you are about—letting the end of the towel go right into the dishwater. I’m sure I don’t want my father to go clear off there and die, if you do.”
“People don’t always die—there’s Robinson Crusoe, taken home after all he went through, and I’m sure the Swiss Family will. I don’t like to look at the last chapter ever, but of course they will be. I heard father tell mother, when I was folding up the table-cloth, that he wouldn’t be gone over a year and a half, and was sure to make ten or twenty thousand dollars.”
“Twenty-thousand-dollars! Why, Hannah, that’s more than Squire Merrill’s worth! Why, how rich we’d be! perhaps we’d have a new house.”