Belle Gossip

She has got on a torn dress, hitched up at one side sufficiently to reveal an unbuttoned shoe; there are flakes of white wash in her hair and on her chin; her dress is wet, her fingers are parboiled, and her thumb has been split with a hammer, but her eye is as clear and bright as that of a major-general on field-day. She picks up a handful of skirts and skims through the apartments, seeing five hundred things which should be done at once, and trying to do them; and every time she comes in reach of the dresser she snatches a look into the glass, and shoves a fresh hair-pin into her dilapidated coil.

And thus planted in the debris, like a queen on her throne, she unblushingly asserts that "It's an awful job"; "Everything is in wretched shape"; "I'll be so glad when this is over"; "It does seem as if my back will snap in two"; "I've a good mind to say I'll never clean house again so long as I live." And then her mind unconsciously soars heavenward, and she wonders if there will be a house-cleaning season there, and if not, how a heaven can be made of it. It is this speculation which gives her that dreamy expression when she is cutting your bread with the soap-knife.