“Yes, indeed, we’ll work—­that is all we ask for.”

“And hit’s time I vas ha bout mine hinstead hof gossiping ’ere.  Yer’ll soon see ’ow spick and span I’ll make heverything.”

With a despatch, deftness, and strength that to Mildred seemed wonderful, she bought the lime, made the wash, and soon dark stains and smoky patches of wall and ceiling grew white under her strong, sweeping strokes.  It was not in the girl’s nature, nor in accordance with her present scheme of life, to be an idle spectator, and from her travelling-bag she soon transformed herself into as charming a house-cleaner as ever waged war against that chief enemy of life and health—­dirt.  Her round, white arms, bared almost to the shoulder, seemed designed as a sculptor’s model rather than to wield the brush with which she scoured the paint and woodwork; but she thought not of sculpture except in the remote and figurative way of querying, with mind far absent from her work, how best she could carve their humble fortunes out of the unpromising material of the present and the near future.

CHAPTER XV

“Welcome home”

Mildred felt that she had become a working-woman in very truth as she cleaned the dingy closets, vindictively prying into corners and crevices that had been unmolested by generations of tenants, and the rich color produced by summer heat and unwonted exertion deepened at the thought, “What would Vinton Arnold, what would his mother think if they saw me now?  The latter would undoubtedly remark,” she murmured, in bitterness of spirit, “that I had at last found my true sphere, and was engaged in befitting tasks; but should I lose in his eyes?”

Indeed she would not, either in his eyes or in those of any other man capable of appreciating womanly grace.  Genuine beauty is a rare and wonderful gift, and, like genius, triumphs over adverse circumstances, and is often enhanced by them.  Even prosaic Mrs. Wheaton was compelled to pause from time to time to admire the slender, supple form whose perfect outlines were revealed by the stooping, twisting, and reaching required by the nature of the labor.  But the varying expressions of her face, revealing a mind as active as the busy hands, were a richer study.  The impact of her brush was vigorous, and with looks of aversion and disgust she would cleanse away the grimy stains as if they were an essential part of the moral as well as gross material life of the former occupants.  To a refined nature association forms no slight element in the constitution of a home; and horrible conjectures concerning repulsive indications of the vulgar people who once kennelled where others would live decently and purely are among the manifold miseries of tenement life.  In spite of all her will-power, Mildred shuddered, and shrank from even this remote contact with a phase of humanity peculiarly revolting to her, and the protest of her innate delicacy would often appear strongly upon her face.