“I’ve not,” said Mr. Wheeler, vehemently. “I’ve got the two tubs there, flannels in one without soda, the other things in the other with soda. It’s bad stuff, that’s what it is. I thought I’d show you.”
“It’s management they want,” said Mrs. Wheeler, wearily; “it’s the touch you have to give ’em. I can’t explain, but I know they wouldn’t have gone like that if I’d done ’em. What’s that you’re hiding behind you?”
Thus attacked, Mr. Wheeler produced his other hand, and shaking out a blue and white shirt, showed how the blue had been wandering over the white territory, and how the white had apparently accepted a permanent occupation.
“What do you say to that?” he enquired, desperately.
“You’d better ask Bob what he says,” said his wife, aghast; “you know how pertickler he is, too. I told you as plain as a woman could speak, not to boil that shirt.”
“Well, it can’t be helped,” said Mr. Wheeler, with a philosophy he hoped his son would imitate. “I wasn’t brought up to the washing, Polly.”
“It’s a sin to spoil good things like that,” said Mrs. Wheeler, fretfully. “Bob’s quite the gentleman—he will buy such expensive shirts. Take it away, I can’t bear to look at it.”
Mr. Wheeler, considerably crestfallen, was about to obey, when he was startled by a knock at the door.
“That’s Captain Flower, I expect,” said his wife, hastily; “he’s going to take Poppy and Emma to a theatre to-night. Don’t let him see you in that state, Peter.”
But Mr. Wheeler was already fumbling at the strings of his apron, and, despairing of undoing it, broke the string, and pitched it with the other clothes under the sofa and hastily donned his coat.