A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl; Or, Margaret's Saturday MorningsBenton, Caroline French
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A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl; Or, Margaret's Saturday Mornings
Benton, Caroline French
Home economics -- Juvenile literature
When it was the turn of the Pretty Aunt to give her lesson in
housekeeping, she said she should begin at daybreak, so Margaret was not
surprised to hear her knock at the door early in the morning, almost
before she was dressed.
She helped the little girl take the clothes off the bed, one at a time,
and put them on two chairs near the windows, being careful not to let
the blankets get on the floor. She beat the pillows well, and turned the
mattress up over the foot of the bed so the air could get underneath it.
The white spread she kept by itself, and had Margaret help fold it up in
its creases. "Nothing wrinkles more easily," she told Margaret, "and a
wrinkled spread spoils the look of neatness a bed ought to have when it
is made. If you have a heavy Marseilles spread, do not sleep under it;
fold it at night and put it away, and use only the blankets, because it
is not good for any one to sleep under such a weight. Now hang up your
night-dress, and put away your slippers and bath-wrapper. I am delighted
to see that you have no dress or petticoats lying around this morning
from last night. Too many girls do not hang them up at once when they
take them off, but leave them over a chair, and put them away in the
morning, perhaps creased with lying. It is much better to put them away
as you take them off. Open your windows, next, top and bottom, and set
the closet door open, too, and then we will go to breakfast."
"Why do I open the closet door?" asked Margaret, laughing at the idea.
"Because your closet needs airing just as much as your room does; more,
indeed, because its door has been shut all night, while the fresh air
has been blowing into the room through the open windows. If you did not
air it every day, it would soon have a close, shut-up odor, and perhaps
your dresses would have it, too, which would certainly not be nice at
all. It has to have fresh air to keep it sweet. Now we will shut the
door of your room as we go, for the cold wind would chill the halls, and
besides, the sight of a disordered bedroom is not attractive."
After breakfast Margaret went up-stairs and shut the windows of her
room, and a little later, when it was warm, she and her aunt put on
fresh white aprons and went in and began to put it to rights.
One stood on each side of the bed and turned the mattress from head to
foot; the next day, Margaret was told, it must be turned from side to
side as well as over, to keep it always in good shape. If this was not
done constantly there would soon be a hollow place in the middle, which
would never come out, and the mattress would be spoiled. They laid over
it the nice white pad which kept it looking always new and clean, and
then the lower sheet, the wide hem at the top and the narrow one at the
bottom, the seams toward the mattress, and tucked it smoothly in at the
sides.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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