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Rh took up housekeeping at all. It was many months since I had felt constrained to look under the bureau after sweeping days, or consider the linen-closet shelves.

I had joined the Women's Historical Society, in the meantime, and some other feminine clubs for the improvement of my mind, and had even hunted out my long-disused paints with a free conscience. So you may know what a shock it was.

The farther I looked the more certain it became. Undeniably, dust lay upon the tops of the books in the library. The silver had lapsed into an uncommunicative dullness, and, like the preacher of old, we looked through a glass darkly. Long pauses became noticeable when Charlotte was "doing up" the rooms, which to my newly awakened consciousness had a disturbing, not to say sinister bearing.

I may as well own up frankly that I hate personally to conduct sweeping day. Dust, either passive or active, I ignore whenever possible and I didn't want to investigate Charlotte's methods in reducing the same. The prospect of having to do so, as in earlier housekeeping days, lay like a leaden weight upon my usually cheerful spirits.