Nobody knew what she meant. Perhaps she hardly knew herself.
They only thought that her home life was not suited to her, and that she took it hard.
"I've got a discouragement at my stomach," said Luclarion Grapp.
"What's the matter?" asked Mrs. Ripwinkley, naturally.
"Mrs. Scarup. I've been there. There ain't any bottom to it."
Mrs. Ripwinkley knew that Luclarion had more to say, and that she waited for this monosyllable.
"She's sick again. And Scarup, he's gone out West, spending a hundred dollars to see whether or no there's a chance anywhere for a _smart_ man,--and that ain't he, so it's a double waste,--to make fifty. No girl; and the children all under foot, and Pinkie looking miserable over the dishes."
"No. She's powerful weak. I just wish you'd seen that dirty settin'-room fire-place; looks as if it hadn't been touched since Scarup smoked his pipe there, the night before he went off a wild-gandering. And clo'es to be ironed, and the girl cleared out, because 'she'd always been used to fust-class families.' There wasn't anything to your hand, and you couldn't tell where to begin, unless you began with a cataplasm!"
Luclarion had heard, by chance, of a cataclysm, and that was what she meant.
"It wants--creation, over again! Mrs. Scarup hadn't any fit breakfast; there was burnt toast, made out of tough bread, that she'd been trying to eat; and a cup of tea, half drunk; something the matter with that, I presume. I'd have made her some gruel, if there'd been a fire; and if there'd been any kindlings, I'd have made her a fire; but there 'twas; there wasn't any bottom to it!"
"You had better make the gruel here, Luclarion."
"That's what I come back for. But--Mrs. Ripwinkley!"
"Don't it appear to you it's a kind of a stump? I don't want to do it just for the satisfaction; though it _would_ be a satisfaction to plough everything up thorough, and then rake it over smooth; what do you think?"
"What have you thought, Luclarion? Something, of course."
"She wants a real smart girl--for two dollars a week. She can't get her, because she ain't. And I kind of felt as though I should like to put in. Seemed to me it was a--but there! I haven't any right to stump _you_."
"Wouldn't it be rather an aggravation? I don't suppose you would mean to stay altogether?"