“No. Well, what must I do with it?”
“Can’t say, but don’t put it back on the walls.”
“Jo, you and Billie dust the books and I will finish up the pictures. I can’t trust myself to dust Professor Green’s books. I am afraid of breaking the tenth commandment all the time,” sighed Thelma. “I’ll wash the windows, too.”
“Oh, Thelma! The white-armed Gudrun sitting in windows washing them! That’s not occupation meet for a queen. Let me do it.”
“You, Billie McKym, wash a window! Did you ever wash one in your life?”
“Well, no, not exactly, but I bet I could. What’s the use of a college education if one can’t wash windows when she gets to be a full grown senior?”
But since the object of the girls was to get the room clean, it was decided that Thelma was to wash the windows. My, how they worked! Jo found she had muscles that her athletics had never revealed. She found them because they began to ache.
“Why, to dust all these books and books is as bad as building a house,” she said, straightening up and stretching when she had finished the poet’s corner.
“Exactly like laying brick,” declared Billie. “I’m going to join the Hod-carriers’ Union. I’ll be no scab.”
Katy had occasionally poked her head in at the door, entreating “whin they coom to the scroobing” to call her.