“They’ve got to be washed first, though. It isn’t nice to send them back unwashed.”
“Oh, what a prim old maid! You ought to live alone with a cat and a poll parrot!”
“That isn’t old-maidness, that’s just plain, every-day tidiness. Now you get a dish towel, and I’ll wash, and we’ll have these things put to rights in a jiffy.”
The girls knew how, and they did their work well, but it did take some time, for such work cannot be done too swiftly. But on the whole, they enjoyed the task, and were gratified at the sight of the shining glass and china in their own glass-cupboard, and the neatly packed basket and tray full of dishes to be returned to their home pantries.
Then they went and sat before their Study fire, to rest and talk.
“Seems to me,” said Dolly, “time does go awful fast. Here it’s after three o’clock, and the afternoon is ’most gone.”
“And we must go home and dress,” said Dotty, “if we’re going to have Grace and Ethel. These ginghams won’t do.”
“No, not in our pretty new house! Well, let’s go home and dress, and then we can telephone them, from home. Shall I do it, or you?”
“Oh, I’ll do it. You’ll have all you can do to get dressed in time to get back here before dark. You’re so everlasting slow.”
“Slow and sure, as the molasses said to the quicksilver. All right, you telephone the Rawlinses, and if they can’t come, what then? Shall we ask any one else?”