“A pleasant subject for a fine Sunday! Thank you. I dont want to hear any more.”
“But you will hear more of it; for I am going to have the steps of our house taken away and replaced by marble, or slate, or something that can be cleaned with a mop and a pail of water in five minutes.”
“Why?”
“My chain of thought began at the door steps we have passed, all whitened beautifully so as to display every footprint, and all representing an expenditure of useless, injurious labor in hearthstoning, that ought to madden an intelligent housemaid. I dont think our Armande is particularly intelligent; but I am resolved to spare her knees and her temper in future by banishing hearthstone from our establishment forever. I shudder to think that I have been walking upon those white steps and flag ways of ours every day without awakening to a sense of their immorality.”
“I cannot understand why you are always disparaging Armande. And I hate an ill-kept house front. None of our housemaids ever objected to hearthstoning, or were any the worse for it.”
“No. They would not have gained anything by objecting: they would only have lost their situations. You need not fear for your house front. I will order a porch with porphyry steps and alabaster pillars to replace your beloved hearthstone.”
“Yes. That will be clever. Do you know how easy it is to stain marble? Armande will be on her knees all day with a bottle of turpentine and a bit of flannel.”
“You are thinking of inkstains, Marian. You forget that it does not rain ink, and that Nelly will hardly select the porch to write her novels in.”
“Lots of people bring ink on a doorstep. Tax collectors and gasmen carry bottles in their pockets.”
“Ask them into the drawing-room when they call, my dear; or, better still, dont pay them, so that they will have no need to write a receipt. Let me remind you that ink shews as much on white hearthstone as it can possibly do on marble. Yet extensive disfigurements of steps from the visits of tax collectors are not common.”