"I can't do anything with it!" wailed poor Stefana. "And Elly Precious gets into it, and makes it walk! He's in it now."
"It's walkin'!" shrieked Evangeline, as the portentously stiff shirt staggered a little to one side. Stefana, filled with enthusiasm and generosity of soul, had starched not the bosom alone but the entire shirt. She had done it thoroughly. The result was alarming. It was a terrible shirt!
"Tell me what to do—somebody tell me!" entreated the little laundress.
"I've unstarched it, and unstarched it, and seems as if it got stiffer."
"Boiling water," breathed Miss Theodosia, too spent with her struggles not to laugh, to admit of further speech.
"Wait! Don't anybody dass to pour boilin' water on till I get Elly Precious out! Come to Evangeline this minute, darlin' dear—no, they shan't boil him!"
Elly Precious emerged, crowing. The deaf-but-not-dumb little Flagg appeared, to swell the number around the Terrible Shirt. Stefana dried her tears. Miss Theodosia had the sense of being looked up to—relied upon. She rose to the occasion buoyantly. As unused as Stefana to men's bosoms, she yet stepped into the breach. Unused to issuing orders, she issued them.
"Evangeline, you and Carruthers see to the baby. Stefana, come with me.
Bring—it."
They went back to the big house, she with that new and intoxicating sense of importance, and Stefana with the Terrible Shirt.
"Whose is it—that?" she asked, indicating the creaking white garment.
"What were you doing with it?"
"Starching it," mumbled poor Stefana. "It took most a package. He said he liked his stiff. 'Put in plenty o' starch,' he said to Mother, and she always did. So I did. I thought if he said—"