The one I gave Mr. Pepper was hardly fit to cover a dog. . . .
No, Miss Rachel, they could _not_ be mended; they're only fit for dust
sheets. Why, if one sewed one's finger to the bone, one would have one's
work undone the next time they went to the laundry."
Her voice in its indignation wavered as if tears were near.
There was nothing for it but to descend and inspect a large pile of
linen heaped upon a table. Mrs. Chailey handled the sheets as if she
knew each by name, character, and constitution. Some had yellow stains,
others had places where the threads made long ladders; but to the
ordinary eye they looked much as sheets usually do look, very chill,
white, cold, and irreproachably clean.
Suddenly Mrs. Chailey, turning from the subject of sheets, dismissing
them entirely, clenched her fists on the top of them, and proclaimed,
"And you couldn't ask a living creature to sit where I sit!"
Mrs. Chailey was expected to sit in a cabin which was large enough,
but too near the boilers, so that after five minutes she could hear her
heart "go," she complained, putting her hand above it, which was a state
of things that Mrs. Vinrace, Rachel's mother, would never have dreamt
of inflicting--Mrs. Vinrace, who knew every sheet in her house, and
expected of every one the best they could do, but no more.
It was the easiest thing in the world to grant another room, and the
problem of sheets simultaneously and miraculously solved itself, the
spots and ladders not being past cure after all, but--
"Lies! Lies! Lies!" exclaimed the mistress indignantly, as she ran up on
to the deck.
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