“To be sure she goes out washing now and then, but she has time enough to sew other days, as she only has those two little rooms to take care of, and she hasn't been taking much care of them evidently.”
“I thought they only had one room,” said Marty.
“They have taken another now, as Mr. Torrence has steady work. Father got him a place in a livery stable, and he's not a drinking man, so they ought to get along.”
“Well, how did Mrs. Torrence take your offer of help?” asked Mrs. Ashford.
“She did not seem to like it at first. I suspect she thought I ought to make the garments myself. But after a while she came around and—”
“Your pleasant ways would make anybody come around,” exclaimed Marty warmly.
“Thanks for the compliment,” replied Miss Alice, smiling. “Well, the amount of it is I have been giving her lessons, and she is really beginning to do right well. The little tots look a great deal more comfortable, and now I am going to show her how to alter some of the clothes the Methodist Sunday-school ladies gave her, so that she will have something decent to wear herself.”
“I think you are getting into business!” exclaimed Mrs. Ashford. “It is certainly very good of you to take all that trouble. And I should imagine it is not the most comfortable place in the world in which to give sewing or any other kind of lessons. Now Mrs. Scott is different. Her room is always as neat as a pin.”
“Oh, yes!” cried Miss Alice, “that reminds me there's more to my story. These sewing lessons are actually making Mrs. Torrence cleaner and more tidy. The first day I went the table was all cluttered up, and when she cleaned it off for me to cut out on she looked rather ashamed of its dinginess, and muttered some excuse as she wiped it over with an old cloth. The next day that table looked as if she had been scrubbing it all night—it was so startlingly clean. She had scrubbed a chair, too, for me to sit on. Then I suppose she thought the clean table and chair put the rest of the room out of countenance, for on my next visit I found the floor had been scrubbed and the windows washed. When I told mother about it she said the woman should be encouraged, and sent her that striped rug that used to be in our dining-room, you remember. It was to spread down before the stove. The result of that was the old stove has been polished up within an inch of its life. Yesterday I took to the children those gay pictures that came last Christmas with the Graphic, and tacked them on to the wall. Now the next time I go I expect to see the walls scoured or whitewashed or something,” and Miss Alice finished with a laugh.
“If you keep on you will work quite a change in their way of living,” said Mrs. Ashford.