The Irish Washerwoman promises to wash the muslin curtains as white as a hound’s tooth, and as sweet as “new mown hay;” and she tells the truth. But when she promises to “get them up” as clear as a kitten’s eyes, she tells a story. In nine cases out of ten, the Irish Washerwoman mars her own admirable washing by a carelessness in the “getting up.” She makes her starch in a hurry, though it requires the most patient blending, the most incessant stirring, the most constant boiling, and the cleanest of all skillets; and she will not understand the superiority of powder over stone blue, but snatches the blue-bag (originally compounded from the “heel” or “toe” of a stocking) out of the half-broken tea-cup, where it lay companioning a lump of yellow soap since last wash—squeezes it into the starch (which, perhaps, she has been heedless enough to stir with a dirty spoon), and then there is no possibility of clear curtains, clear point, clear any thing.
“Biddy, these curtains were as white as snow before you starched them.”
“Thrue for ye, ma’am dear.”
“They are blue now, Biddy.”
“Not all out.”
“No, Biddy, not all over—only here and there.”
“Ah, lave off, ma’am, honey, will ye?—’tisn’t that I mane; but there’s a hole worked in the blue-rag, bad luck to it, and more blue nor is wanting gets out; and the weary’s in the starch, it got lumpy.”
“It could not have got ‘lumpy’ if it had been well blended.”
“It was blended like butther; but I just left off stirring one minute to look at the soldiers.”
“Ah, Biddy, an English laundress would not ‘run after the soldiers!’”