Katherine laughed merrily:  “Don’t be too sure of that.  I expect that you will be saying ‘thank you’ presently, when you are washed and dressed; it makes such a difference when one’s hair is tidy!  If you will go into your room again I will bring you some hot water in a minute.  But I can hear my brother Phil coming, and he is such a dreadful mimic that he will be taking you off for the benefit of Seal Cove to-morrow, in spite of all that I can do to stop him.”

Mrs. M’Crawney vanished with all speed, the hint about being made fun of being more powerful to move her than anything else would have been.

Katherine carried in the hot water and tried not to see how badly the bedroom needed sweeping also.  She had no more time for heavy housework that day, nor did she deem it a duty to waste her strength on labour which the Irishwoman was equally well able to perform.  Peter had come in when she returned to the outer room, and was looking about him as if scarcely able to believe the evidence of his own eyes.

“Well, if it don’t beat everything!” he exclaimed, then strode over to the shelf and examined the books, which Katherine had been careful to dust.  “You’ve taken the dust off the books too!  I expect you found it rather thick on ’em, didn’t you?  I don’t think it has been rubbed off ’em these six months past.”

“Just what I thought!” she retorted, scrubbing the table with great energy.  “But I hope you don’t expect me to pity you for that.  A man who can read books ought to know how to dust them.”

“I hadn’t thought of doing it myself, that’s a fact; but they look real nice now,” he said admiringly.  And he was wheeling round to pay Katherine a compliment from another direction, when the bedroom door opened again, and a surprised:  “Hullo! what’s up?” burst from him.

Even Katherine looked amazed, the transformation had been so rapid.  Ten minutes ago a tousled, unclean creature, in a ragged night garment had disappeared, and now a clean-faced woman in a tidy frock, and with tidy hair, came from the inner room.

“It is like your impudence to be asking such personal questions as that,” Mrs. M’Crawney retorted lightly, with a smile which showed her good-looking when she was not peevish.  “But it is better I’m feeling in myself, which is sure to come to the outside sooner or later.  Now, Miss Radford, dear, there’s no call for you to go blacking that stove; I’ll do it myself after you are gone.  I’m just dreadful obliged to you for what you’ve done, especially for sweeping the floor.  I’ve a soul above sweeping, I have, and I can’t be always lowering myself to dirty work of that sort; it is damaging to the morals, I find.”

Katherine laughed until the tears came into her eyes, then gasped out in jerky tones:  “It would be very bad for my morals to live with floors unswept, and I think that is how most people feel.”