"I am not very strong," she said with a sigh. "I used to be, but of late I've been failing. But Nannie is so handy, and so willing, that she saves me a great deal, and she has a notion that she would like to fix up the front room and try to get hold of my Norm. It would be worth trying, maybe, but I don't know. We are very low down, Mrs. Smith."
And then Mrs. Decker sank into one of the green painted chairs and cried.
"Of course it is worth trying," Mrs. Smith said, bustling about, as though she must find some more windows to raise; tears always made her feel as though she was choking. "If I were you I would have a carpet, and curtains to the windows, and lots of nice things, and make a home fit for that boy of yours to have a good time in. There is nothing like a nice pleasant home to keep a boy from going wrong."
Before Mrs. Decker went home, she had promised to try the ironing the very next week, and if she could do it well enough to suit Mrs. Smith, the carpet should be bought.
"Poor thing!" said Mrs. Smith, looking after her, and rubbing her eyes with the corner of her apron. "The ironing shall suit; if she irons wrinkles into the collars and creases in the cuffs, I won't say a word; only I guess maybe I won't give her collars and cuffs to iron; not till she learns how. I ought to have done something to kind of help her along before; only I don't know what it would have been. It takes that boy of mine to set folks to work."
Meantime, "that boy" sat in the kitchen door, studying. Not from a book, but from his own puzzled thoughts. He did not see his way clear. Under Nettie's direction he had planned a very satisfactory sofa with a back to it, and two chairs, but how to get the material needed to finish them, and also for curtains for the new room, had sent Nettie home in bewilderment, and stranded him on the doorstep in the middle of the afternoon to think it out.
"How much stuff does it take for curtains, anyhow?"
"For curtains?" said Mrs. Smith, coming back with a start from her ironing table and the plan she had for teaching Mrs. Decker to iron shirts. "Why, that depends on what kind of stuff it is, and how many curtains you want, and how big the windows are."
"Well, what do they use for curtains?"
Mrs. Smith still looked bewildered.