"But I don't mean only to do _your_ dusting. If you are satisfied, I depend on your recommending me to your friends. I could take care of four sets of rooms just as well as of one. There are so many people in Sandyport who have beautiful houses and collections of bric-à-brac, that I think there might be as many as that who would care to have me if I didn't cost too much. Four places at two dollars each would make eight dollars a week. I could live on that nicely."
"I wish you'd count me in as four," said Mrs. St. John. "I should see four times as much of you, and it would make me four hundred times happier."
But Georgie was firm, and before they parted it was arranged that she should begin her new task the next morning, and that her friend should do what she could to find her similar work elsewhere.
Her plan once made, Georgie suffered no grass to grow under her feet. On the way home she bought some cheese-cloth and a stiff little brush with a pointed end for carvings, and before the next day had provided herself with a quantity of large soft dusters and two little phials of alcohol and oil, and had hunted up a small pair of bellows, which experience had shown her were invaluable for blowing the dust out of delicate objects. Her first essay was a perfect success. Mrs. St. John, quite at a loss how to face the changed situation, gave her a half-troubled welcome; but Georgie's business-like methods reassured her. She followed her about and watched her handle each fragile treasure with skilful, delicate fingers till all was in perfect fresh order, and gave a great sigh of admiration and relief when the work was done.
"Now come and sit down," she said. "How tired you must be!"
"Not a bit," declared Georgie; "I like to dust, strange to say, and I'm not tired at all; I only wish I had another job just like it to do at once. I see it's what I was made for."
By the end of the week Georgie had another regular engagement, and it became necessary to break the news of her new occupation to Cousin Vi. I regret to say that the disclosure caused an "unpleasantness," between them.
"I would not have believed such a thing possible even with you," declared that lady with angry tears. "The very idea marks you out as a person of low mind. It's enough to make your Grandmother Talcott rise from her grave! In the name of common decency, couldn't you hunt up something to do, if do you must, except this?"