"Oh, we can leave you the gully," Aileen answered. "And we'll make a swimmer of you just as soon as we can. Every one finished? Then we'll go and look at our work."
The house reeked pleasantly of soap and turpentine, and, so far as was possible, it shone. It had been fortunate for the workers that Mr. Gordon's furniture was both simple and scarce, and so had economized cleaning. They had arranged it to more advantage in the bare little rooms, and already they were homelike, though lacking as yet the smallest pretence at adornment. The cretonne petticoats had been ruthlessly torn from the packing-case dressing-tables, the shelves and tops of which were modestly covered, for the present, with newspapers. Gay Indian bedspreads lent a touch of colour to the prevailing dinginess of the brown walls and linoleum-covered floors of the two front rooms.
"Don't you feel a holy glow that we took up those linoleums?" Tom asked.
"When I think of what was under them, I do!" rejoined his wife grimly.
The lobby was still a scene of wild unpacking; but in the third bedroom, a tiny apartment off the dining-room, the American oil-stove stood in all its bravery of black paint and bright blue enamel, the glass door of the oven shining invitingly. A copper kettle simmered over the flame: on nails on the wall hung Aileen's aluminium pots and pans. A rough shelf held an imposing stack of cookery books, flanked by a big pile of dish towels.
"It does look jolly!" Garth said. "When are you going to begin to cook, Mother?"
"As soon as I have a clean house," Aileen answered. "To-morrow we'll have to attack that awful store-room: and I foresee heart-to-heart talks with Horrors on the subject of milk buckets. His look as if they were washed about once a month. Tom, how lovely you've made the bath!"
The tin sides of the bath fairly winked at them as they entered the little bathroom.
"Seeing that I used gallons of boiling water and about half a ton of soda to it, I should think it ought to look lovely," said Tom. "I doubled myself into the thing for so long that when I finally emerged, I thought I'd never straighten myself!" His eyes twinkled. "What a heap there is in housekeeping one never suspected! I've regarded Julia and Annie as quite ordinary people for years, but now they strike me as rather more than human!"
"But is you two people always going to work?" asked a small voice. "Nothin' else at all?"