I cooked some hot water by boiling it. Then I obtain Hon. Dishpan & satisfy him full of hot water, adding soap until it seem comfortable. Nextly I remove Hon. Dishrag from window where he enjoy sunshine by looking into garden. With reverent fingers, so I should not mix mikerobes with him, I flop him to Dishpan. Then I splunge my hands into that sud and stir continuously.
Mr Editor, did you ever stand with your fingers in warm dishwater thinking Thoughts. Such kind hotness surrounds your wrists that you feel poetical and disengaged. I am not suprised that so many servant ladies is such sweet singers while dish-washing. Their souls cannot remain hardened while their fingers is soaking in such pleasant soap sud.
Suddenly, while thusly I stood, great confusion came to my brain. I remember what Hon. Mrs told me about keeping Hon. Dishrag away from dirt. Then I look to that pile of Dishes. Some of them, though rare & expensive, was all disarranged by colours of food and blackberry pie. No! I could not enrage my sweet Boss Lady by touching sacred rag to that!
So I lift Hon. Dishrag from soap-water, ring him out with loving care and begin shake him so no rude germs would remain from contact with sud. I make 2 complete shakes and was starting Shake No 3—when O! Hon. Dishrag escape from my finger and start flopping to floor! Terrors! This must not happen!! How raged Hon. Mrs would be if this respected rag should catch some dust against her stric orders!
With immediate quickness I make extreme grab sidewards, snatching rapidly like cats catching grasshopper. I got him—between thumbs and elbows I caught that escaping Rag, but in thusly behaving—whop! My physique collapsed against entire dish-pile and following climax happened:
SMASHES!!!!
With noise peculiar to a crockery store falling off an Alp all that expensive China & glasswear elapse to floor and mix itself into broken hash like a battlefields after cannon shoots it. You could not tell cups from plates in that crackery of crockery.
“O murder from ignorant Japanese!” holla Hon. Mrs Jas Jones & Company making inrush to kitchen. “Alive sakes, you have dropped my entire home!”
And yet I smiled.
“Why you laugh like hickory Indian when all I have is broke?” she otter.