They put crumpled paper between the andirons, covering all the ashes which lay there so they did not show. On this they laid kindling, crossed, and then some pieces of wood. When they gathered up the newspaper there was nothing to brush from the carpet, and everything was neat.
"There," said her aunt, "that's all for to-day. Run and wash your face and hands,—they need it!"
CHAPTER VIII
HOUSECLEANING; CELLAR AND ATTIC
Margaret's Saturday morning lessons were interrupted at this point by the spring housecleaning. Everybody was so busy taking up and putting down carpets, hanging curtains and pictures over, putting away winter clothes and getting out summer ones, that the lessons seemed forgotten. The grandmother, however, remembered, and one day she took the little girl around the house while the cleaning was going on, showing her how the work was done. They found the guest-room had been finished, so they sat down there and talked.
"Housecleaning is very different nowadays from what it used to be," she began. "We used to take up all the carpets at once, and keep everything upset for a week or two, and then get all to rights. Now we take a room at a time, and so do the whole house gradually and comfortably. Perhaps the work is divided, and part done in the spring and part in the fall, to make it still easier. Then we do not take up every carpet every year, as we did. This guest-room carpet, for one, does not need beating and cleaning and putting down again, because the room is not used all the time, and once or twice a year it has a scrubbing with warm water or turpentine or ammonia after it is swept."
"Yes," said Margaret, "I learned about that in my sweeping lesson."
"When this room was cleaned," her grandmother went on, "the curtains were taken down, and the pictures wiped off and put into the storeroom. The furniture was well dusted and put away also, and the bed all taken apart, the mattress beaten gently, the springs dusted and wiped off; the bed slats were washed in hot soap and water, and put away, too. Then the bed itself was taken to pieces and washed in warm soap-suds, because being white iron they could not hurt it. If it had been a wooden bed it would have been wiped with a damp cloth. And then, Margaret, what do you think? a brush dipped in turpentine was put in all the corners of the bed and the springs, so that if by any chance a little bug should have crept in there to hide, it would be driven out."
Margaret looked disgusted. "We don't have bugs in our beds," she said, indignantly. "Nice, clean people never do."