This was only adding fuel to the fire. Filled with the idea of making soap, the girls were now determined she should go.
“Why, mother,” said Mary, the eldest, “we can make the soap. I have helped you make it a great many times, and if there is anything I don’t know, I can get Mrs. Hadlock to show us. What shall we be good for, if we are always tied to your apron-strings, and never try to do anything for ourselves?”
“Sure enough,” said the father; “’twill be a good thing for you and John both; you can take care in the house, and he out of doors.”
“I’ll set up the leach for you,” said John; “and after the soap is made, if we have good luck, we’ll have a celebration, and make candy.”
“Come, wife, make up your mind; don’t worry about the children; if I ain’t afraid to leave the farm to John, I’m sure you needn’t be afraid to leave the house to the girls. I’ve no idea of doing with our John as old Peter —— did with his boy Jim. He never learnt Jim to do anything, or contrive anything, for himself, from the time he was hatched. ‘James,’ the old man would say in the morning, ‘do you go into the barn-yard, and look in the north-east corner, and you will find a hoe; take that hoe, and go down to the western field, and begin to hoe on the acre piece, and stick two punkin seeds in every other hill.’ After the old man died, Jim was good for nothing, because he never knew where to find the hoe; lost his land, and is now working out at day’s work, and is as poor as Lazarus.”
Mrs. Rhines was not at all convinced that she was of such little consequence in the household, and that affairs could proceed so easily without her.
“There is that quilt,” she said, “that I meant to have had put into the frames next week.”
This ill-judged speech only made her absence more desirable.
“O, mother!” was the unanimous cry, “we can quilt the quilt.”
“There, girls, hold your tongues; you know you can do no such thing.”