“Ellen can’t clear the table until breakfast is over,” said Mrs. Grafton, soothing the little boy in her arms. “Your father, Cecilia, Charles, and I had our breakfast as usual at quarter after seven. I imagine that Ellen was waiting for you to finish. Moreover, the gas-man came to look at the meter in the cellar, and she and I both went down with him. I just came up from there.”
Mrs. Grafton’s face settled into weary lines, and she sighed heavily. But Barbara did not notice. She was looking at the new egg-stain on the Wilton rug.
“Mother,” she said, in her fresh, energetic voice, “I really do think things might be managed more systematically here than they actually are. You know that, if there is one thing that we learn at college, it is the need of system. Now see here!” Barbara rose, and began to pace back and forth over the egg-stain. “We rise at six-thirty, an absurdly early hour, though perhaps necessitated by the work of a large family—”
“Yes,” interposed her mother, smiling through her pallor. “We all rise at half-past six.”
Barbara flushed. “Now, mother!” she said. “I know I haven’t done it these few days since I came home, but that was accidental. It shall not happen again. And Jack is dreadful about getting up!”
“Well,” said Mrs. Grafton, “this ‘system’?”
“Oh, yes. We should rise and finish breakfast by quarter-past eight. Then let Ellen do the dishes, of course, and all the work in the kitchen. Then make Jack get up and do the outside work, the lawns, sweeping the porches, and so forth, to get it out of the way early. Cecilia,—how I hate that nickname Gassy!—Cecilia ought to do her share. She should be taught to keep her room in order, and the library too, I think.”
“I won’t!” shouted an excitable little voice from the next room.
“Don’t talk that way, Cecilia,” called Barbara. “You’ll never improve, if you don’t do something in this world.”
“Why don’t you do something, then?” retorted the voice, “instead of telling mother how to run the house?”