her. She had not
touched her breakfast.

"Why don't you eat?" inquired Miss Hitty, not unkindly.

"I'm not hungry," returned Miss Evelina, timidly.

"Well," answered Miss Mehitable, her perception having acted in the
interval, "I don't wonder you ain't, with all this racket goin' on.
I'll be out of here in a minute and then you can set here, nice and
quiet, and eat. I never like to eat when there's anything else going
on around me. It drives me crazy."

True to her word, she soon ascended the stairs, where the quaking
Araminta awaited her. "It'll take some time for the water to heat,"
observed Miss Hitty, "but there's plenty to do before we get to
scrubbing. Remember what I've told you, Minty. The first step in
cleaning a room is to take out of it everything that ain't nailed to
it."

Every window was opened to its highest point. Some were difficult to
move, but with the aid of Araminta's strong young arms, they eventually
went up as desired. From the windows descended torrents of bedding,
rugs, and curtains, a veritable dust storm being raised in the process.

"When I go down after the hot water, I'll hang these things on the
line," said Miss Mehitable, briskly. "They can't get any dustier on
the ground than they are now."

The curtains were so frail that they fell apart in Miss Hitty's hands.
"You can make her some new ones, Minty," she said. "She can get some
muslin at Mis' Allen's, and you can sew on curtains for a while instead
of quilts. It'll be a change."

None too carefully, Miss Mehitable tore up the rag carpet and threw it
out of the window, sneezing violently. "There's considerable less dirt
here already than there was when we come," she continued, "though we
ain't done any real cleaning yet. She can't never put that carpet down
again, it's too weak. We'll get a bucket of paint and paint the
floors. I guess Sarah Grey had plenty of rugs. She's got a lot of rag
carpeting put away in the attic if the moths ain't ate it, and, now
that I think of it, I believe she packed it into the cedar chest.
Anyway I advised her to. 'It'll come handy,' I told her, 'for Evelina,
if you don't live to use it yourself.' So if the moths ain't got the
good of it, there's carpet that can be made into rugs with some fringe
on the ends. I always did like the smell of fresh paint, anyhow.
There's nothin' you can put into a house that'll make it smell as fresh
and clean as paint. Varnish is good, too, but