Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/277

Rh weeks together, and seldom walked further than the church. She conducted a crocheting agency, taking orders for city dealers, and giving out piece-work to women in the village who wished to earn a little pin-money. Miss Lucretia was noted for her system and her neatness. On certain days of the week she gave out this crochet work at exactly two o'clock in the afternoon, and whoever arrived a few minutes early had to await the stroke of the clock, as Miss Brown was not visible until then. The women who came for work gathered in the sitting-room, and one by one they were admitted to Miss Lucretia's sleeping chamber, where she received them in a bed incredibly white and smooth. They used to wonder how Miss Lucretia could lie under a coverlid absolutely wrinkleless, and how she could handle her worsted and give all her directions without rumpling the smoothness of the turned-back sheet, or marring the geometrical outline of her pillow. As the candidate retired from Miss Brown's presence, her bundle of yarn was sharply eyed by the other women who waited in the sitting-room, as there was a rumour that Miss Lucretia gave more work to her favourites than to others, and that they rolled their worsted up tightly to conceal the evidence of her partiality.

In the matter of good housewifery, the three Brown ladies were triumphant and invincible. They carried their daintiness even into their diet, regarding anything heavier than the most ethereal food as somewhat too virile and indelicate for their spinster household. The assertion was once made that Essex was the cleanest county in Massachusetts, and Ipswich was the cleanest town in Essex, and the Browns were the cleanest people in Ipswich. Even when Miss Lucretia was suffering