Chapter 4
Section 4 of Holiday Stories for Young People For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by E. Tyabin. Holiday Stories for Young People. The Cloverleaf Club of Bloomingdale by Margaret E. Sangster. Chapter 4. How to Sweep
In the first story of this chapter, I spoke of the trouble housekeepers in Bloondale had to get and keep good servants. We Cloverleaf girls made up our minds that we would learn to be independent. We resolved to know how to do every sort of housework, so that we might assist our mothers whenever they needed us, and be ready for any emergency as it came along.
Aunt Hedy's daughter-in-law in Boston sent the poor old soul a letter which made it rather uneasy, and Grandma thought that I might better let her go and pay Sally a visit while Mother was away than to wait till her return. The fall dressmaking and cleaning will be coming on then, said Grandmother, and thee will be busy with school again. So, if Hedy takes her vacation now, she will be here to help the dear Mother then. I agreed to this, for the chance of having the
kitchen to myself was very tempting. The club was charmed. They said they would just live at our house and help me with all their might. Then you won't have Hetty's moods to worry you, said Viva consolingly. We had a good time. Nevertheless, it was a happy day for me when Aunt Hetty, bag and baggage, came home a week sooner than she was expected. Nobody was looking for her, but the good old soul, having seen her relations, felt restless and wanted to get home. Something done
told me, honey, she said, that Aunt Hedy am wanted here, and sure enough it's so, your pa and ma off on dey travels, and nobody but one poor lamb left to take care of de old house and de old madam. I wouldn't have gone only for dat no account sal anyhow. I felt like a bird set free from a cage when Aunt Hedy appeared, and she came in the very nick of time, too. But that same day up rolled the stage, and out popped my great-aunt Jessamine, grandmama's sister, from Philadelphia. The two
old ladies had so much to tell one another that they had no need of me. So I went to the Downings, where the club was to hold a meeting, armed with brushes and brooms, taking a practical lesson in sweeping and dusting. The Downings were without a maid, and we all turned in to help them. Alice, Nell, and Clem, the older sisters, accepted our offer joyfully, though I think their mother had doubts of the wisdom of setting so many of us loose in her house at once. But Linda Curtis
and Jeannie Cartwright found that they were not needed and went home. Viva had a music lesson and was excused. Linda's mama had taken her off on a jaunt for the day, and Amy could not be spared from home. Only Lois and I were left to help Marjorie, and, on the principle that many hands make light work, we distributed ourselves about the house under the direction of the elder Downing sisters. Now, girls all, let me give you a hint which may save you lots of time and trouble.
If sweeping and dusting are thoroughly done, they do not need to be done so very often. A room once put in perfect order, especially in a country village, where the houses stand like little islands in a sea of green grass, ought to stay clean a long time. It is very different in a city, where the dust flies in clouds an hour after a shower, and where the carts and wagons are constantly stirring it up. Give me the sweet, clean country. Mother's way is to carefully dust
and wipe first, with a damp and then with a dry cloth, all the little articles of bric-a-brac, faces, small pictures, and curios, which reprise because they are pretty, after which she sets them in a closet or drawer quite out of the way. Then, with a soft cloth fastened over the broom, she has the walls wiped down, and with a hairbrush which comes for the purpose, She removes every speck of dust and cobweb from the cornices and corners.
A knitted cover of soft lamp wick over a broom is excellent for wiping a dusty or a papered wall. Next, all curtains, which cannot be conveniently taken down, are shaken well and pinned up out of the way. Shades are rolled to the top. Every chair and table is dusted and carried out of the room which is about to be swept. If they are books, they are dusted and removed, or if they are arranged on open shelves, they are first dusted and then carefully covered.
Mother's way is to keep a number of covers of old calico for the purpose of saving large pieces of furniture, shelves, and such things, which cannot be removed from their places on sweeping days. It is easier, she says, to protect these articles than to remove the dust when it has once lodged in carvings and moldings. We girls made a frolic of our dusting, but we did it beautifully, too. I suppose you've all noticed what a difference it makes in work, whether you go at it cheerfully or go at it as a task that you hate.
If you keep thinking how hard it is and wishing you had somebody else to do it for you, and fretting and fuming and pitying yourself, you are sure to have a horrid time. But, if you take hold of a thing in earnest and call it fun, you don't get half so tired. In sweeping, take long light strokes and do not use too heavy a broom. Millie, said Lois, do you honestly think sweeping is harder exercise than playing tennis or golf?
I hesitated. I really don't know. One never thinks of hard or easy in any games out of doors. The air is so invigorating. They have a great advantage over housework in that way.
Well, for my part, said Marjorie, I like doing work that tells. There is so much satisfaction in seeing the figures in the carpet come out brightly under my broom. Alice, what did you do to make your reception room so perfectly splendiferous? Girls, look here. You'd think this carpet had just come out of the warehouse.
Mother often tells Aunt Hetty, said I, to dip the end of the broom in a pail of water in which she has poured a little ammonia, a teaspoonful to a gallon. The ammonia takes off the dust and refreshes the colors wonderfully. We couldn't keep house without it. I finished rather proudly.
Did you bring some from home? Asked Marjorie, looking hurt. Why, of course not. I asked your mother, and she gave me the bottle, and told me to take what I wanted.
A little coarse salt, or some damp tea leaves strewed over a carpet before sweeping, adds ease to the cleaning process, said Mrs. Downing, appearing on the scene and praising us for our thoroughness.
The reason is that both the salt and the tea leaves, being moist, keep down the light floating dust, which gives more trouble than the heavier dirt. But now you will all be better for a short rest. So come into my snuggery, and have a gossip and a lunch, and then you may attack the enemy again. Mrs. Downing, you are a darling, exclaimed Lois, as we saw a platter of delicate sandwiches, and another of crisp ginger cookies, with a great
pitcher of milk. We didn't know that we were hungry, but now that I think about it, I, for one, I'm certain that I could not have lived much longer without something to supply the waste of my failing cellular tissue. I think, replied Mrs. Downing, that we would often feel much better for stopping in our day's work to take a little rest. I often pause in the middle of my morning's work and lie down for a half hour, or I send to the kitchen and have a glass of hot milk brought me, with a crust or a cracker.
You girls would not wish to lie down, but you would often find that you felt much fresher if you just stopped and rested, or put on your jackets and hats and ran away for a breath of outdoor air. You would come back to your work like new beings.
Just as we did in school after recess, said Marjorie. Precisely. Change of employment is the best tonic. Our luncheon over and our rooms swept, rug shaken, stairs and passages thoroughly brushed and wiped. We polished the windows with cloths dipped in ammonia water and wrung out, and followed them by a dry rubbing with
soft linen cloths. Then it was time to restore the furniture to its place, and bring out the ornaments again from their seclusion. Now we saw what an advantage we had gained in having prepared these before we began the campaign. In a very little while the work was done and the house settled, and so spotless and speckless we felt sure it would keep clean for weeks. Mother's way is to use a patent sweeper daily in rooms which are occupied for sewing and other work, and she
says that she does not find it necessary to give her rooms more than light sweeping oftener than once in six weeks. Of course, it would be different if we had a large family. Paint should be wiped, doorknobs polished, and a touch of the duster given to everything on these sweeping days. The clover leaves voted that feather dusters, as a rule, were a delusion. One often sees a girl, who looks very complacent as she flirts a feather duster over a parlor,
displacing the dust so that it may settle somewhere else. All dusted articles should be wiped off, and the dust itself gotten rid of, by taking it out of the house and leaving it no chance to get back on that day at least. When I reached home in time for our one o'clock dinner, I found great-aunt Jessamine and Grandmama both waiting for me, and the former, who was a jolly
little old lady, was quite delighted over the Bloomdale girls and their housekeeping. All is, she said, will those downings do as well when there are no other girls to make them think the work is play? Oh, answered Grandmama, I never trouble my head about what folks will do in the future. I have enough to do looking after what they do in the present. Alice here gets along very well all by herself a great part of the time. By the way, child, did Aunt Teddy give the mother's
letter? I rushed off to get my treasure. It would soon be the blessed day when I might expect a letter telling me when my father and mother would be at home again. End of section four.
