wel swathed about her head, skirt pinned back, sleeves rolled
up--the costume dedicated to house cleaning since the days of
What's-Her-Name, mother of Lemuel (see Proverbs)--Mrs. Brewster had gone
through the ceremony twice a year.

Furniture on the porch, woolens on the line, mattresses in the
yard--everything that could be pounded, beaten, whisked, rubbed,
flapped, shaken or aired was dragged out and subjected to one or all of
these indignities. After which, completely cowed, they were dragged in
again and set in their places. Year after year, in attic and in cellar,
things had piled up higher and higher--useless things, sentimental
things; things in trunks; things in chests; shelves full of things
wrapped up in brown-paper parcels.

And boxes--oh, above all, boxes; pasteboard boxes, long and flat, square
and oblong, each bearing weird and cryptic pencilings on one end;
cryptic, that, is to anyone except Mrs. Brewster and you who have owned
an attic. Thus "H's Fshg Tckl" jabberwocked one long slim box. Another
stunned you with "Cur Ted Slpg Pch." A cabalistic third hid its contents
under "Slp Cov Pinky Rm." To say nothing of such curt yet intriguing
fragments as "Blk Nt Drs" and "Sun Par Val." Once you had the code key
they translated themselves simply enough into such homely items as
Hosey's fishing tackle, canvas curtains for Ted's sleeping porch,
slip-covers for Pinky's room, black net dress, sun-parlour valence.

The contents of those boxes formed a commentary on normal American
household life as lived by Mr. and Mrs. Hosea C. Brewster, of Winnebago,
Wisconsin. Hosey's rheumatism had prohibited trout fishing these ten
years; Ted wrote from Arizona that "the li'l' ol' sky" was his
sleeping-porch roof and you didn't have to worry out there about the
neighbours seeing you in your pyjamas; Pink's rose-cretonne room had
lacked an occupant since Pinky left the Winnebago High School for the
Chicago Art Institute, thence to New York and those amazingly successful
magazine covers that stare up at you from your table--young lady, hollow
chested (she'd need to be with that decolletage), carrying feather fan.
You could tell a Brewster cover at sight, without the fan. That leaves
the black net dress and sun-parlour valance. The first had grown too
tight under the arms (Mrs. Brewster's arms); the second had faded.

Now don't gather from this that Mrs. Brewster was an ample, pie-baking,
ginghamed old soul who wore black silk