“Note it,” she added, “as the heading of your next chapter.”
“Note what?” asked Minora impatiently.
“Why, ‘The Subtle Significance of Sofas,’ of course,” replied Irais. “If,” she continued, as Minora made no reply appreciative of this suggestion, “you were to call unexpectedly, the bad luck which pursues the innocent would most likely make you hit on a washing-day, and the distracted mistress of the house would keep you waiting in the cold room so long while she changed her dress, that you would begin to fear you were to be left to perish from want and hunger; and when she did appear, would show by the bitterness of her welcoming smile the rage that was boiling in her heart.”
“But what has the mistress of the house to do with washing?”
“What has she to do with washing? Oh, you sweet innocent—pardon my familiarity, but such ignorance of country-life customs is very touching in one who is writing a book about them.”
“Oh, I have no doubt I am very ignorant,” said Minora loftily.
“Seasons of washing,” explained Irais, “are seasons set apart by the Hausfrau to be kept holy. They only occur every two or three months, and while they are going on the whole house is in an uproar, every other consideration sacrificed, husband and children sunk into insignificance, and no one approaching, or interfering with the mistress of the house during these days of purification, but at their peril.”
“You don’t really mean,” said Minora, “that you only wash your clothes four times a year?”
“Yes, I do mean it,” replied Irais.
“Well, I think that is very disgusting,” said Minora emphatically.
Irais raised those pretty, delicate eyebrows of hers. “Then you must take care and not marry a German,” she said.
“But what is the object of it?” went on Minora.
“Why, to clean the linen, I suppose.”
“Yes, yes, but why only at such long intervals?”
“It is an outward and visible sign of vast possessions in the shape of linen. If you were to want to have your clothes washed every week, as you do in England, you would be put down as a person who only has just enough to last that length of time, and would be an object of general contempt.”
“But I should be a clean object,” cried Minora, “and my house would not be full of accumulated dirt.”
We said nothing—there was nothing to be said.
“It must be a happy land, that England of yours,” Irais remarked after a while with a sigh—a beatific vision no doubt presenting itself to her mind of a land full of washerwomen and agile gentlemen darting at doorhandles.
“It is a clean land, at any rate,” replied Minora.
“I don’t want to go and live in it,” I said—for we were driving up to the house, and a memory of fogs and umbrellas came into my mind as I looked up fondly at its dear old west front, and I felt that what I want is to live and die just here, and that there never was such a happy woman as Elizabeth.
April 18th
I have been so busy ever since Irais and Minora left that I can hardly believe the spring is here, and the garden hurrying on its green and flowered petticoat—only its petticoat as yet, for though the underwood is a fairyland of tender little leaves, the trees above are still quite bare.
February was gone before I well knew that it had come, so deeply was I engaged in making hotbeds, and having them sown with petunias, verbenas, and nicotina affinis; while no less than thirty are dedicated solely to vegetables, it having been borne in upon me lately that vegetables must be interesting things to grow, besides possessing solid virtues not given to flowers, and that I might as well take the orchard and kitchen garden under my wing. So I have rushed in with all the zeal of utter inexperience, and my February evenings were spent poring over gardening books, and my days in applying the freshly absorbed wisdom. Who says that February is a dull, sad, slow month in the country? It was of the cheerfullest, swiftest description here, and its mild days enabled me to get on beautifully with the digging and manuring, and filled my rooms with snowdrops. The longer I live the greater is my respect and affection for manure in all its forms, and already, though the year is so young, a considerable portion of its pin-money has been spent on artificial manure. The Man of Wrath says he never met a young woman who spent her money that way before; I remarked that it must be nice to have an original wife; and he retorted that the word original hardly described me, and that the word eccentric was the one required. Very well, I suppose I am eccentric, since even my husband says so; but if my eccentricities are of such a practical nature as to result later in the biggest cauliflowers and tenderest lettuce in Prussia, why then he ought to be the first to rise up and call me blessed.
I sent to England for vegetable-marrow seeds, as they are not grown here, and people try and make boiled cucumbers take their place; but boiled cucumbers are nasty things, and I don’t see why marrows should not do here perfectly well. These, and primrose-roots, are the English contributions to my garden. I brought over the roots in a tin box last time I came from England, and am anxious to see whether they will consent to live here. Certain it is that they don’t exist in the Fatherland, so I can only conclude the winter kills them, for surely, if such lovely things would grow, they never would have been overlooked. Irais is deeply interested in the experiment; she reads so many English books, and has heard so much about
