"But, Aunt Lovey," said Mrs. Bunker, looking up suddenly, and finding those penetrating gray eyes fixed on her, "what did you mean by 'mustard to mix?'"
"Oh, I did not explain, did I? Well, when I was first married and moved out west—Utica was out west then, from Connecticut—I knew no more about managing for myself than you do now. I used to find my work accumulate, and I would get discouraged and go about a whole week, feeling as if the world rested upon my shoulders; and that made me mope, and your uncle John got discouraged, because I did, and there was no end of the snarl things would get into. Our only near neighbor was a nice tidy body, who always looked like wax-work."
"Something such a person as you," interrupted Mrs. Bunker, playfully.
"Well, perhaps so; but you never saw my house; her house was like a pin from one end to the other. One day I just ran in to borrow a little meal—ours had given out unexpectedly—and I found my good neighbor in a flurry, acting just as I used to feel sometimes."
"'Oh, she had everything to do,' she said, 'and company coming to dinner.'
"'Everything? Well, what? As far as I could see, everything was done.'
"'Oh, the table's to set;' and up and around the room she went again.
"'But it was two hours to dinner—what else?'
"'Why!—well, then, mustard to mix!'
"That was every earthly thing, come to think of it; but she had been flurried by the sudden arrival, and did not stop to see that it could not possibly disturb any of her arrangements. So I went home, and found I generally had mustard to mix, when my flurries came on; that is, if I set myself right to work to clear up the snarl, it wasn't half so bad as I felt it was. Setting down to fret over matters only snarled things the more, and then poor John was troubled to see me worried, and things would go from bad to worse."