“Are you awake?” Virginia’s voice lilted up the stairs next morning.
Awake! why, sleep had been impossible in that cottage for hours past!
For sheer undiluted racket, commend me to two earnest-souled girls, who get up early, and go about with a stealthy tread that creaks every old board in the place, and commune with each other in stage whispers that penetrate through every crack in the floor, all on the pretext of making the fire!
We had decided that we could manage very well ourselves, without sending for anyone to take Abigail’s place; and in order to forestall me, the others had got up about cockcrow, and then began such a whirligig below, that I just lay still and endeavoured to allocate every fresh noise.
They raked and shovelled at the grate, and appeared to be scattering cinders all over the place. They broke up applewood twigs with resounding snaps, and argued as to the amount required to set the fire going. Ursula said you ought to put in handfuls till you got a good crackling blaze; Virginia said that was a childish, brainless way of doing it, to say nothing of the chance of waste; by rights the quantity of twigs employed ought to be strictly in inverse ratio to the quantity of inflammable gas contained in the coal. I dare say I should have heard a good deal more as to the way to assess the ignitable quality of coal, but fortunately the fire burnt up quickly, and they gave their attention to other domestic details.
They dashed about the brass fender; they whacked the blacklead brush against the oven-door at every turn; they set down the zinc pail with a ringing thud, and then scoured the hearth with zeal enough to take off half an inch of stone surface; they polished the brass fire-irons with some concoction of bath-brick and salt which they invented on the spot, as they couldn’t find any metal polish; they banged the hearthrug out of doors till the surrounding hills reverberated with the echoes; they rinked the carpet-sweeper up and down till it made me dizzy to listen; and as this was not thorough enough for Ursula, she also got a short stiff brush and apparently pommelled out any dust that might be under the settle and in other obscure corners; they dusted with equal energy, and then went off into the kitchen to consult about the breakfast menu, while the kettle chose the opportunity to boil all over the fire, thereby raising clouds of white ash that settled on everything, and they said, “Oh, dear! Just _look_ at it.”