"Well, if it don't beat everything!" he exclaimed, then strode over to the shelf and examined the books, which Katherine had been careful to dust. "You've taken the dust off the books too! I expect you found it rather thick on 'em, didn't you? I don't think it has been rubbed off 'em these six months past."
"Just what I thought!" she retorted, scrubbing the table with great energy. "But I hope you don't expect me to pity you for that. A man who can read books ought to know how to dust them."
"I hadn't thought of doing it myself, that's a fact; but they look real nice now," he said admiringly. And he was wheeling round to pay Katherine a compliment from another direction, when the bedroom door opened again, and a surprised: "Hullo! what's up?" burst from him.
Even Katherine looked amazed, the transformation had been so rapid. Ten minutes ago a tousled, unclean creature, in a ragged night garment had disappeared, and now a clean-faced woman in a tidy frock, and with tidy hair, came from the inner room.
"It is like your impudence to be asking such personal questions as that," Mrs. M'Crawney retorted lightly, with a smile which showed her good-looking when she was not peevish. "But it is better I'm feeling in myself, which is sure to come to the outside sooner or later. Now, Miss Radford, dear, there's no call for you to go blacking that stove; I'll do it myself after you are gone. I'm just dreadful obliged to you for what you've done, especially for sweeping the floor. I've a soul above sweeping, I have, and I can't be always lowering myself to dirty work of that sort; it is damaging to the morals, I find."
Katherine laughed until the tears came into her eyes, then gasped out in jerky tones: "It would be very bad for my morals to live with floors unswept, and I think that is how most people feel."
"Perhaps they do, but I was never the ordinary kind of woman; my mother always said I was sort of one by meself, and she was right. When Mrs. Burton was staying here, with them two blessed babies, I used to marvel how she could laugh and carry on as she did, while the hungry sea as drowned her husband rocked at the very door of the house. Now, if it had been me, and my husband lay somewhere out there under the grey, heaving water, I could not have sung and danced and played hop-scotch, blindman's buff, and things of that sort, the same as she did."
Katherine's lips took on a scornful curl, and there was an indignant light in her eyes as she retorted: "No, I expect if Mr. M'Crawney died you would wear crape a yard deep all round your frocks, and talk morning, noon, and night of how much you loved him. But I am quite sure that he would love you a great deal more if you took the trouble to give him tidy rooms and well-cooked meals. If I were a man I should just hate a woman who treated me as badly as you treat Mr. M'Crawney."
"Hooray, you've got it now, and no mistake, old woman!" interjected Peter, rubbing his hands in huge enjoyment of the scene. Katherine had forgotten all about him, or it is possible she would not have spoken so plainly; as it was, at the sound of his laugh, she turned with a swift apology to Mrs. M'Crawney.
"Please forgive me, I have no right to meddle in your concerns; but it just makes me feel wrathful to see you throwing away the happiness you might have, and existing in such dirt and discomfort, when everything about you might be clean, sweet, and wholesome."