If the woman would only mop it every other day it would not be so bad; but it seemed to Janice that Mrs. Watkins would just wade through dirt to her knees in the kitchen before she would use either mop or scrubbing brush.
It was true that daddy did not often look into the kitchen, now that there was somebody supposedly capable of keeping the room, as well as the rest of the house, in order. And Janice was glad he did not look around the house much.
Such training as she had enjoyed under her mother's eye had made Janice thorough. Mrs. Day had been a thoroughly good housekeeper.
And she had always kept so well up with her housework that there were never any difficult jobs left to haunt one, and her house looked always neat. Nor was she obliged to keep half her prettily furnished rooms shut up to keep them clean!
Janice did all she could on this short Saturday morning. She had first of all to he sure that daddy's room was dusted—every bit. Then there were the halls and stairs to do. After those, the porches must be swept.
"For you know," sighed Mrs. Watkins, "it looks so much better for a child like you to be out sweeping the porch and paths than what it would me."
Janice could not quite understand this reasoning. But she knew it must be a deal easier for Mrs. Watkins to rock in a chair in the house than to wield the broom. That went without saying.
She did not think of lunch, although the faded-out lady did not neglect her own. Janice was down on her hands and knees, with scrubbing brush and pail, when the housekeeper carried some savory dish or other into the dining room.
"I presume since you had your breakfast so late you will not care to eat now," said the woman. To tell the truth, a tear or two dropped into the strong soda water in the pail.
"Though I don't believe salt will help start the grease-spots on this floor," Janice thought, rubbing her eyes with the wrist of one hand. "There! I am a regular cry-baby. I said I would do something to relieve daddy of bothering about the housework. And if scrubbing a floor is the best I can do—"