"Aw! I didn't," denied Sammy. "I just licked it like I done the cheese that was on the cook's table. He gimme the cheese. But I'd ruther a-had the soap—it tasted better."
"You sure needed soap," teased Michael.
"I'd like to be all smiling on my face like that pretty lady," said Jeanne, wistfully. "And she hadn't any holes in her clothes."
"Oo got a pretty face," assured Annie, patting it with one plump hand.
"So have you when it's clean. Why don't you wash it yourself as I do mine? I'm sure you're big enough."
"Nuffin to wipe it on," objected Annie.
This was true. The family towel was a filthy affair when there was one. Even if Mollie had had money, it is doubtful if she would have spent it for towels. As for washing anything, it was much easier to tuck it into the stove or to drop it into the lake. Mollie simply wouldn't wash; and since Mrs. Shannon's hands had become crippled with rheumatism, she couldn't wash. Jeannette, however, washed her own shabby dress. Her father washed and mended his own socks and shirts. Also he had towels for his own personal use and those he managed to launder, somehow. Time and again he had provided towels and bed-linen for his family; but Mollie, who grew lazier with every breath she drew, had taken no care of them. One by one, they had disappeared.
"I think," said Jeannette, wisely, "that it would be a very good thing if I knew how to sew. Then, perhaps, father could get me some cloth and I could make things. I'd love to have nice clothes."
"Grown-up ladies," contributed Michael, "wears a lot of white things under their dresses—twenty at a time I guess. I seen 'em on a clothesline. The lady what was hangin' 'em up says, 'Don't you trow no mud on them underclothes.'"
"Any mud," corrected Jeanne, patiently. "And saw, not seen."