The plate-cleaning episode had been caused by the attempted introduction of a cleaning-cloth, which dispensed with the necessity for plate powder or metal paste. "Sarah seemed quite pleased about it at first," said Penelope with a sigh. "She pretended to understand perfectly when I explained how nice it would be to have a clean and empty housemaid's cupboard, instead of having every shelf crowded with plate-brushes and bits of sodden rag and tins of sticky brass paste, and that horrid saucer full of plate powder that sprinkles pink dust over everything when it gets dry. You know that kind of cupboard, don't you? Well, Sarah took to the idea like a lamb, and everything was going splendidly when mother caught her rubbing up the drawing-room candlesticks with my new patent cloth; and because I couldn't prove on the spur of the moment that the Sheffield plate would be none the worse for it fifty years hence, mother said she had the utmost confidence in my judgment, but she could not help feeling that the old way was safer. After that, I found Cook putting the cloth on the fire with the tongs, while Sarah hoped impressively at the top of her voice that she hadn't given herself blood-poisoning by using the nasty-smelling thing. So now all the old pink saucers and tins and things have reappeared in the housemaid's cupboard, and the plate-cleaning once more occupies the whole of the morning, and the brass occupies another and the stair-rods another, to say nothing of all the useless copper pots and pans on the kitchen chimney-piece that Cook never uses, but won't let me put away--oh, we are jogging along quite comfortably now in the dear old way of a hundred years ago!" The sequel to this occurred about a week later, when I went to call on Penelope's mother and found ladders placed against the front of the house, and the trailing creepers of ages given over to the ministrations of the local nurseryman. "Yes," said Penelope's mother, complacently, "they should have been cut before. Creepers are unhealthy things; they shut out light and air and spoil the window architecture. As Penelope says, the outside is the only part of any house on which the architect has expended either skill or attention, so it is a pity to hide it." I said something polite down her ear-trumpet about new ways of looking at these things; and Penelope's mother smiled in agreement. "Some people do not know how to move with the times," she said. "Because a thing was done in a certain way a hundred years ago, let it be done in that way for ever and ever, they say. Yet, by bringing intelligence to bear upon the common things of every day, even toil may become a pleasure, and duty--well, duty almost ceases to exist. Of course, I am speaking figuratively," she added hastily, as if she felt she had gone too far.