Page:Sheila and Others (1920).djvu/189

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
OUR WASH-LADIES
177

wards' capable charge. She is energetic in the pursuance of her calling, and interlards it with much general conversation to which fortunately strict attention is not at all essential. She wears a large piece of brown paper pinned across her ample shoulders, bein' as she cheerfully says, her honly weak spot. Her rubicund countenance is a guarantee of wholesomeness and honest labor, not above its task. She is a fine example of the English product at its best, bred to its lot and contented therewith. She is a confirmed optimist. When that most inopportune and unpatriotic shower boomed down upon us at nine o'clock a.m. on October 28th just as the bells were ringing in the Victory Loan Campaign, Mrs. Edwards was gazing through a rain-bedimmed window in our laundry at the drenched regions of the back yard which did not invite to the hanging out of a prospective washing. With a beaming countenance she turned to Catharine and remarked, "This must mean showers o' blessin's on the Victory Loan," a sentiment I could not help repeating in the hearing of the young pessimist of seventeen we are raising who had earlier observed gloomily that Providence seemed always on the wrong side of this war.