CHAPTER IX
LAUNDRY WORK
Margaret's teachers held a meeting before her next lesson. They could not decide whether she should be taught to wash and iron or not.
Her Pretty Aunt said, "Certainly not! She will never need to know. Even on a desert island she will find some Woman Friday to do her laundry work!"
"But," suggested her Other Aunt, "suppose she had a very beautiful thin dress to be washed, and had a very poor laundress to do it who might spoil it; don't you think she would wish she knew how to do it herself?"
"Besides," said her mother, "however could she teach an ignorant servant to wash and iron if she did not know how?"
"Of course she must know," said her grandmother, sternly. "I will teach her myself."
So on Friday night Margaret made up a bundle of clothes as she was told; "samples," grandmother called them, because there were some of every sort of thing found in a regular washing; these they took down to the laundry.
"The first thing is to sort the clothes," the lesson began. "Put the white, starched things in one pile; the bed and table linen in another; the flannels by themselves; the stockings by themselves; the handkerchiefs and colored things in two more piles.
"Many people do not soak clothes over night, and it is not necessary to do so, but I am going to teach you to do it because it is the easiest way. If you are ready, look over the white things first for spots. Coffee, tea, and fruit stains must have boiling water poured through them till they disappear. Rust must be rubbed with lemon juice and salt and laid on a new, shiny tin in the sunshine till the spot disappears; some people use acid, but this is apt to eat the cloth. Blood stains must be soaked in cold water; get the handkerchief you had on your cut finger and put it in this pail. Now wet the white things only, rub on a little soap, and get out every spot; put them in nice rolls, the soapy side turned in, and lay them all in the warm water in these two tubs, clothing in one, and table and bed linen in the other—never put the two together. Do not soak the flannels or they will shrink; nor the colored things, or they will fade; nor the stockings.