“as the door creaketh on his hinges, so the slugger turneth on his bed.” liza wopp’s voice was compelling in its significance. through the rose-lit dreams of moses, the sound and the awful words were like the threatenings of an approaching storm.
“yeh mar, i’m comin’.”
moses’ teeth chattered. it was not cold, but wash-day meant to the unhappy boy a dismal round of duties.
“oh mosey,” cried betty at the breakfast table, being first on the scene to arrange her flowers, “we’ll hev a spellin’ match to-day i bet.”
“don’t care a doughnut,” answered moses defiantly, “i’d ruther turn the washin’ machine any day than stand like a goose spellin’ words any arss can spell.”
betty playfully thrust a small forefinger into one of the fresh biscuits on the table and bore it, impaled on the rosy weapon, triumphantly to her plate. this was for the amusement of moses, but instead of laughing as he was expected to do, he eyed his little sister with assumed indifference.
“you carnt spell so smart anyways,” he ventured. betty turned her piquant nose up at him and suddenly bounced up from the table.
“oh, poor li’l nancy wants in!” she raised the window and gently lifted the cat into the room. running to her place at the table, she poured half of her cup of milk into a saucer and set it in a sunny spot on the floor.
“there nancy,” she whispered, “is a sunbeam for breakfast dipped in milk.”
the sunbeam somehow got into the internal decorations of nancy and filtered out through her eyes. their amber depths seemed to have turned into liquid gold.
jethro, lying on a mat at the door, was contentedly gnawing a bone. nancy, having finished her milk, and still enjoying its flavor from her whiskers, as betty remarked, stealthily approached her canine playmate. a slight altercation took place concerning the ownership of the bone. it was not long before jethro walked out of the room, perceptibly toeing in, and probably reflecting that life was too short to wrangle over a bare bone anyway.
mrs. wopp was too busy to eat breakfast in the orthodox fashion. she could be heard in the kitchen preparing for the trying ordeal of wash-day. out in the yard the head of the house was busy feeding the fowl.
clank! clank! clank!
the sound was an ominous warning to moses, to finish his breakfast with all possible speed.
“good-by dad and mar and mosey,” called betty as she sped down the path toward the school-house.
moses heaved a sigh, as he entered the kitchen and took his stand at the washing-machine. one hundred and thirty-seven times that diabolical barrel had to be turned before the dirt accumulated by the wopp family during the week could be obliterated.
the chinking began in earnest. moses stood, turning till each freckle on his ruddy face shone with honest sweat.
“now moses,” announced his mother, “jist for a change an’ rest like, turn this here separator.”
another sound in a somewhat higher key was heard. moses had simply modulated in his domestic symphony of labor from a major task to a minor one. as a change and refreshing recreation, moses was allowed to turn the small wheat-mill. ninety soul-stirring turns it required to empty the hopper once, and he must turn out enough flour for a batch of bread. his youthful soul was in revolt at such servitude. he had no sympathy to squander on the children of israel in bondage vile. making bricks for pharoah was infantile amusement compared to his labor.
“the lord loveth a cheerful liver, moses,” said his mother encouragingly, as she saw the growing acidity of the boy’s countenance. mrs. wopp had never forgotten a certain missionary service, during which she had studied a text in gold lettering of old english type on the wall. the uncertain light of stained glass falling on the last word had made it difficult to read. but at last realizing that a sound liver and cheerfulness are closely associated, she had seen no incongruity in her translation of the text.
“all this turnin’ is good for the liver too you know,” she continued, as her son’s vinegary expression remained unaltered.
“yeh,” scoffed moses, “this here turnin’ machines every monday makes me sick. i aint got no liver left to be cheerful.”
mrs. wopp was much too energetically engaged to enter into fuller argument. she busied herself preparing the tubs for rinsing, singing in a high tremolo, “shall we gather at the river?”
“now moses,” she called at the end of the third verse, “git the water for the rinsin’.” the clanking lessened and slowly died down to a complaining rumble. it might have been some monster suffering from indigestion.
mrs. wopp’s eagle eye, again rested on the lowering face of her offspring.
“moses iny boy, yer bile must be riz; this very night you git a dose of physic.” moses lower lip dropped lower and lower.
“take care ole boy, you’ll trip on yer lip in another minute.”
moses, his feelings by this time wrought to a state of down-right rebellion, grasped a pail in either hand and sought the peaceful atmosphere of the river.
when betty returned from school in the afternoon, she beheld snowy billowing apparel on the clothes-line. mrs. wopp, being very thrifty in the matter of using up flour and sugar sacks for underwear, had a motley collection of garments suspended by wooden pegs. a night-shirt of mr. wopp’s bore the inscription “three roses” dimly outlined in pink, while on the southern portion of a pair of more intimate garments could be discerned, fading into palest blue. “great western mills.” the wind was causing a riotous time among the cheerful array of reconstructed sacks, and as betty ran down the path singing “twenty froggies went to school,” a sugar sack sleeve of moses’ shirt embraced a flour sack bosom of his father’s undergarment; and “pure cane sugar“ saluted “ogiveme’s mills.” betty cheerfully performed her task of bringing in the clothes saturated with wind and sunshine. she thought the sweetest smell in the world next to morning-glories and nasturtiums was the smell of clean clothes fresh from the line.
“they smell like the sunbeams was sprinklin’ them with scent,” she declared as she and moses brought the last basketful into the house. mrs. wopp’s nightgown of ample proportions was left out a little longer being still somewhat damp.
as she went about her work, betty’s braids of fair hair tied with wisps of faded red ribbon stood out stiffly from her head. her eyebrows were not quite grown in yet and she presented a comical appearance blinking in the sun as she regarded moses who was helping her.
“gee! betty,” laughed the boy, “yer eyes look orful yet, this is the fust good shake my sides hev felt to-day, it’s jist been ’orrible the way mar was jawred.”
the basket piled high with snowy linen and cotton seemed almost to overflow the brim. betty pressed the clothes down with her brown hands, while the complaining boy enlarged on the sordid details of that trying wash-day and on the manner in which his mother had teased him. the child’s sense of humor outbalanced even her sympathy and a peal of laughter rang out. her laugh was a long delicious trill, as though a bird had dropped from the clouds singing still with the sunrise tangled in its notes. moses paused long enough for a procession of commas and semicolons to pass by. then seeing his disappointment in her apparent lack of sympathy, betty hastened to console him.
“never mind mosey, next monday i’m goin’ to ask mar to let me stay home and turn the nasty mouldy machine.”
“oh no betty,” moses tones were of an elder-brotherly authority, “yer li’l han’s aint meant fer sich servitood. i’d not stan’ by an’ see you do that.” with all his teasing at times, moses adored his little foster-sister. he idealized her, and as mrs. wopp had often remarked, whenever betty left his presence he saw her ascend into heaven in a “whirlwin’ of fire, an’ go-cart of flame.”
as that energetic lady bustled about the kitchen the same evening setting the bread, her voice rose in a series of trills and other embellishments as she sang “where is my wanderin’ boy to-night?”
balancing her voice on a very high note she popped her head through the dining-room door to speak to her husband. he was seated at the table reading “the family herald.” his straggling grey locks were disordered with his mental effort and formed a frieze of irregular design on his shining forehead. mrs. wopp’s voice, in a moment, was safe on terra firma.
“ebenezer, you might bring in my slumber robe, bein’s i’m so busy an’ mose an’ betty’s gone to bed.”
“all right lize, i’ll jist make a note of that.”
there was room on the slip of paper for only this last item, so numerous had been the demands, during this busy day, on mr. wopp’s memory.
he returned his notes to his pocket with the assurance of one whose unreliable memory has been fortified and rendered infallible. nevertheless the voluminous folds of eliza wopp’s cotton nightgown fluttered all night under the starry heavens.
