Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/41

 practice was marked by certain rules, the sand being at first dropped about the newly washed floor in small conical heaps of uniform size and at regular distances—this was expected to last for a certain number of days; then, when busy, passing feet had trampled and scattered it, it was to be carefully streaked, or swept in wavy parallel lines; and when these had in their turn been obliterated, a third fashion of brushing it across in checker-work was admissible: this was expected to close the weekly wear, and bring it round to scrubbing-day again.

The white half-curtains which shaded the spotlessly clean but coarse, knobby glass windows, hung white, fresh, and untumbled in their crisp starchiness; but, besides its crowning grace of neatness, the little room was beautified by slight but decided marks of delicate womanly taste and refinement. Round the tall, narrow looking-glass, on the surface edge of which an ornamental border had been cut in the manufacture of the glass itself, a skillful hand had fastened a thick wreath of shining, dark-green leaves, which, wholly concealing the quaint black