Page:Scarlet Sister Mary (1928).pdf/38

 ate her potato slowly while she looked around at all the things she had done to make the room attractive. Every board in the floor had been scrubbed white with lye and sand, her hands were still sore with the lye cuts. The walls were fresh covered with newspapers bought from Grab-All with eggs; circles of fringed papers sewed to barrel hoops and tied to the rafters looked like big lanterns as they swung gently overhead in the cold drafts of morning air which fell through the broken shingles in the roof. The wide rock hearth was newly reddened with clay, and the mantel-shelf had a newspaper cover which she had carefully scalloped and cut with holes to make blossoms and stars. That was lovely. She tried hard to get one more paper to fix a cover like it for the water-shelf where the cake and wine stood, but not another paper was to be had for eggs or peanuts or anything else. June whitewashed the shelf with the white clay that fell in lumps out of the side of the duck dam gully and it matched the whitened front door and window-blinds, and looked clean and nice enough.

Maum Hannah's bed in the corner of the room was freshly made up with clean things and the wedding-dress lay spread out on it, waiting to be worn. The wide white muslin