So long a time had passed that Dorothy C. had grown to be what father John called ‘a baker’s dozen of years old’; and upon another spring morning, as fair as that when she first came to them, the girl was out upon the marble steps, scrubbing away most vigorously. The task was known locally as ‘doing her front, ‘ and if one wishes to be considerable respectable, in Baltimore, one’s ‘front’ must be done every day. On Saturdays the entire marble facing of the basement must also be polished; but ‘pernickity’ Mrs. Chester was known to her neighbors as such a forehanded housekeeper that she had her Saturday’s work done on Friday, if this were possible.
Now this was Friday and chanced to be a school holiday; so Dorothy had been set to the week-end task, which she hated; and therefore she put all the more energy into it, the sooner to have done with it, meanwhile singing at the top of her voice. Then, when the postman came round the corner of the block, she paused in her singing to stare at him for one brief instant. The next she had pitched her voice a few notes higher still, and it was her song that greeted her father’s ears and set him smiling in his old familiar fashion.
Unfortunately, he had not been smiling when she first perceived him and there had been a little catch in her tones as she resumed her song. Each was trying to deceive the other and each pretending that nothing of the sort was happening.
‘Heigho, my child! At it again, giving the steps a more tombstone effect? Well, since it’s the fashion—go ahead!’
‘I wish the man, or men, who first thought of putting scrubby-steps before people’s houses had them all to clean himself! Hateful old thing!’
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