“Gee, your arms are beautiful!” exclaimed Billie. “I’d give my head for such arms. I’d like to drape them in a silver scarf. Think how they would gleam through.” The arms were snow white and while Thelma’s strength was much greater than Jo’s, her muscles did not show as they did on that athletic young person.
Thelma blushed and laughed as she balanced herself on a stepladder and began taking down pictures. A cloud of dust floated down and enveloped her.
“Look, look! She looks like the ‘white armed Gudrun’! Don’t you remember in William Morris’s ‘Fall of the Neiblungs’? The battle in Atli’s Hall?
“‘Lo, lo, in the hall of the Murder where the white-armed Gudrun stands,
Aloft by the kingly high-seat, and nought empty are her hands;
For the litten brand she beareth, and the grinded war-sword bare:
Still she stands for a little season till day groweth white and fair.
Without the garth of King Atli, but within, a wavering cloud
Rolls, hiding the roof and the roof-sun; then she stirrith and crieth aloud.’”
“Cut it out! Cut it out!” cried Jo, “and come lend a hand.”
“Mustn’t we dust before we sweep?” innocently asked Billie.
“If you want to, but you’ll have to dust again afterwards,” said the white-armed Gudrun from her ladder. “The books are really so dirty that I don’t think it would hurt to wipe down the walls without covering them, but that is a mighty poor cleaning method. Poor Molly! Didn’t she look tired yesterday? I hope she won’t think we are cheeky to take a hand in her affairs.”
“Cheeky! She will think we are her good friends, not like that snippy Miss Fern who stared so at the cobwebs and then went out and palavered over Epiménides Antinous. She used to claim him, so I am told. One of the nurses at the infirmary told me that when Epi Anti had typhoid there, years ago, Miss Fern came and dressed herself up like a nurse and almost bored the staff to death taking care of her sick cousin,” said Billie, delighted with the job that had been given her of wiping down walls. “Isn’t this splendid? Just look at all the dirt I got on my rag!”
“Well, don’t rub it back on the wall,” admonished Jo.