“Come on, girls, we must hurry and get off! Molly will be down stairs any minute now and she must not see us,” and Thelma unwound the towel from her head and took off her apron.
“Well, surely the white-armed Gudrun is not going across the campus with a black face,” objected Billie. “Why, both of you look like negro minstrels——”
“And you!” interrupted Jo. “You should see yourself before you talk about kettles. You’d have not a leg to stand on and not a handle to your name. I told you to tie up your head. I believe nothing short of a shampoo and a Turkish bath will get the grime off you.”
“Let’s hide behind the sofa and after Molly goes on the porch with the baby, we can sneak up to the bath room,” suggested Thelma. The girls then crouched on the floor behind a sofa that stood near the poet’s corner.
In a minute Molly came down the stairs, little Mildred in her arms and on her face a contented and rested expression. She stood in the doorway of the living room and exclaimed with delight over its polished cleanliness.
“Oh, Katy, how splendid it is! Did you do it all by yourself and in such a short time? I don’t see how you managed it. Why, you have even dusted the books. That is almost a day’s work in itself. I was dreading it so,—it is such a back breaking job.”
Jo rubbed her aching back, with a grim smile, and nudged Billie.
“And you have kept yourself so clean, too!” Molly began to feel that she had the prize servant of the east: one who could clean such an Augean Stable as that room had looked, dust all the books, wash the windows and wipe down walls, beat rugs, polish picture glass, etc., etc., and still be neat and tidy. “Why, I would have been black all over if I had done such a great work.”
Katy stood by, quite delighted with the undeserved praise. The young ladies had told her not to tell and far be it from her to refuse to accept the unaccustomed praise from any one. She had never been very apt in any work she had undertaken and no one had ever taken any great pains to teach her, and now if this pretty lady wanted to praise her, why she was more than willing. She felt in her pocket for her fifty cent piece, that still seemed a great joke to her. The sweet taste of the praise did one great thing in her kindly Irish soul: it was so pleasant, she determined to have more of it, and through her slow intelligence there filtered the fact that to get more praise, she must deserve more praise, and to deserve it she must work for it. She beat a hasty retreat to the dining room and actually cleared off the table, where the master had eaten his solitary breakfast, in a full run. She broke no dishes that morning, either, which was a great step forward.
Molly could not tear herself away from the wonder room. She moved around, busying herself changing ornaments a bit and placing chairs at a slightly different angle, doing those little things that make a room partake of a certain personality.