e
there instead. He is an awful nice man and knows all about the birds,
and the trees, and the flowers, and he tells it to me and it has changed
lots of things for me, because I know all the sounds now and what they
mean, and they talk to me instead of being just noises.

I am learning to be a housekeeper, and "I help round," as Mrs. Smith
says, all day. We washed Monday and I never knew it took such work to
just wash clothes. I have washed handkerchiefs and some of Billy's
things up in my room, but here we wash sheets and pillow cases and table
clothes and shirt waists. Talk about shirt waists! I use to tell Mrs.
Murphy that did mine up, that she was an old thief, cause she charged me
twenty cents for them, but now I know she earned her money all right.
First Mrs. Smith soaked the clothes over night with some white powder in
the water. Then Mr. Smith fished the washing machine out of the lake
where it was put where its seams would swell up, and I turned the handle
of the thing, till I thought my arm would come off, but it was rather
fun, as it was out-of-doors and I could watch the chip-monks as they
come looking for scraps from the kitchen. There is some squirrels in the
trees, and they look so pretty setting up on their haunches with their
long bushy tails curled over their backs, nibbling away at a nut. If I
lived in the country, I wouldn't keep a cat, because it kills the
chip-monks and birds. The young black birds are just now trying to leave
their nests, and sometimes they fall out and set on the ground under the
bushes and call their father and mother with a funny little chirp sound,
and the cat hears it and creeps with her stomach close to the ground
till she is close to the baby bird, and then pounces like lightening on
him, and the poor little chap cries for help most like a human baby. The
mother bird will fight for her little ones, as long as she can, and
sometimes I wish she would peck the old cat's eyes out. I spent a good
share of my time chasing the cat from place to place, but even after
doing that and watching the chip-monks and squirrels and stopping to
keep the children from falling off the dock, I got the washing done at
last, and Mrs. Smith rinsed and blued the clothes and hung part of them
up on a line and part she spread on the grass to bleach. My clothes
looked surprised as they never found themselves in such a place before,
laying on nice clean grass with the hot sun blazing down on them. They