“This is the washus,” said Brother William, opening a door to display a particularly clean whitewashed place, with red—brick floor. There was a copper in one corner; at one side, a great old-fashioned open fireplace with clumsy iron dogs, and within this fireplace, in what should have been the chimney corner, an iron door, nearly breast high.
“That’s the brick oven,” said Brother William, noticing the bent of his visitor’s eyes. “We burn fuzz in it mostly; but any wood does. Them hooks is when we kill a pig. The water in that there pump over the sink’s soft: there’s a big tank outside. That other pump you see through the window’s the drinking-water. It never gets dry. Nice convenient washus; isn’t it?”
“Very,” said Martha quietly; “only there ought to be a board put down front of the sink, for a body to stand on.”
“There is one outside. Mrs Badley must ha’ left it there when she cleaned up,” cried Brother William eagerly; and Martha said “Oh!”
Then he led the way back into the keeping-room, and opened a second door, while Martha’s quick eyes were taking in everything, not an article of furniture escaping her gaze; not that she was admiring or calculating their quality or value, but as if she were in search of some particular thing that so far she had found absent; this object being a spot of dirt.
“This here’s the dairy,” said Brother William, entering, and holding open the double doors of the cool, dark, shady place—brick-floored, like the washhouse, but with a broad erection of red-brick all round like a rough dresser, upon which stood rows of white-lined pans, with a large white table in the middle, and the churn, scales, and beaters, and other utensils used in the preparation of the butter, along with the milk-pails at one end.
Martha’s wandering eyes were as badly off as Noah’s dove in the early days after the flood; they could find no place to rest, for everything was scrupulously clean. The cream looked thick and heavy and almost tawny in its yellowness; and upon two large dishes were a couple of dozen rolls of delicious-looking butter, reposing beneath a piece of while muslin, ready for taking to market on the following day.
“Myste and cool, isn’t it?” said Brother William. “You see it’s torst the north, and I’ve got elder-trees to shade the window as well.”
Martha nodded, and continued her search for that spot of dirt which her reason told her must be somewhere; but certainly it was not hiding there.
“There’s four cows in full milk now, Martha. Cream’s rich; isn’t it? Wait a moment.”