“Of course not. She wants to keep up as long as possible her idea about the children being cared for by gentlewomen!” The scorn with which she pronounced gentlewomen! “The nurses are regular Irish biddies, every one of them.”
Much to my surprise on returning from the village a few minutes before nine I discovered that the sheets had been taken off my bed. They were not in the room. As everybody in the house appeared to be asleep and I did not care to awaken them, sleeping without sheets was my only alternative. The mattress did not look any too fresh, so I covered it with my two extra nighties.
My room proved to be a little hot-box. Finally I dozed off and was suddenly awakened by a mighty banging and beating. The night-watchman was cleaning up the kitchen, which was next my room, and he informed me that he had to do it every night between twelve and two. Once he had finished I again dropped off to sleep.
Another mighty thumping and bumping brought me straight up in bed. The man who tended the furnace was busy getting it ready for the cook. It was only a little after four o’clock, but being light out-of-doors I decided to get up. It was then that I discovered that I was expected, as a matter of course, to wash my face and do any other bathing of which I might feel the need, in the kitchen-sink.
“Evidently,” I remarked to myself, “when a gentlewoman meets with reverses she not only loses her sense of modesty, but her desire to keep herself clean. What next?”
After sweeping and dusting the piazzas, the parlor, the schoolrooms, the reception-room, and the stairs, as per schedule, I entered the boys’ dormitory. While downstairs I had heard a voice that seemed to my ears very like that of Mrs. Howard scolding some one. Now I found her in this dormitory where three nurses were getting the more helpless of the boys out of bed and dressing them.
She, Mrs. Howard, reminded me of an ill-tempered dog barking, snarling, snapping at everything in sight. When I entered the dormitory she left off nagging the three nurses and turned on me.
“You’re not beginning very well this morning, Miss Porter,” she snarled.
As it had been some little time since I had looked at the clock I did not know but what I might be a little late in reaching that dormitory. But I did know that I had been working like a horse since before five-thirty. Not caring to have words with any one, Mrs. Howard least of all, I passed on into the adjoining sleeping-porch.
Here I began by picking up the night-clothes of the children who, already up and out, had dropped them on the floor. This done I opened up the beds—all of them wet and two of them soiled.