During the confused pause which ensued, the little old lady made a leap across the muddy space, and, waving Mrs Frisby on one side, entered the house. Such a house! Dirty windows, a dirty floor, a grate which had not been cleaned for several days, and beneath which was such a pile of cinders and ashes that the fire would scarcely burn. Everything in the room was dusty, and in the very middle of the floor lay a pair of man’s muddy boots. “I’m sure I beg your pardon, m’m,” said Mrs Frisby. “’Tis a dreadful untidy place for you to come into. Dear to be sure, just look at Frisby’s boots! He’ve left them there ever since last night, and I can’t get him to so much as clean a window for me.” “Can’t you really?” said Mrs Spencer. “No, I don’t think I’ll sit down, thank you. So Frisby won’t clean the windows or put his boots on one side? Well, you know, there are some wives, Mrs Frisby, who would think it a little hard to ask their husbands to clean windows when he had been working all day, and who would even put away his boots if he did chance to leave them on the floor. The husband, after all, is the breadwinner. Frisby works very hard—I’ll say that for him—and he’s earning good wages, and is always ready to earn a little more by doing odd jobs after hours. Then, when he’s finished those, he has his allotment to see to, and the garden here, which would, I see, be very tidy if you did not allow your children to strew things all over the place.” “I’m sure I’m always telling the childern not to throw their rubbish about,” said Mrs Frisby, tearfully, “but what am I to do? I can’t be indoor and out too. Frisby might very well see to the childern in the garden, I think, when I’m busy in the house.” “It’s all Frisby’s fault, in fact,” said Mrs Spencer, pursing up her lips. “I suppose,” she added, looking round the room, “he ought to dust, and clean the grate, and scrub the floors too.” The old lady spoke so seriously that Mrs Frisby stared hard without replying. “I must say,” continued the former, after a pause, “your husband has worked on my estate for nearly ten years—since he was quite a little boy, in fact—and I have always found him extremely industrious, good-tempered, and obliging. I can’t understand how it is that you seem to give him such a different character.” “Well ’m,” said Mrs Frisby, shifting the child from her right arm to her left, “I don’t altogether complain, but I do think Frisby might be a bit more good-natured, knowin’ how poorly I feel, and so many childern to see to.” “Somebody told me,” said Mrs Spencer, “that Frisby very often helps to dress the children.” “Well ’m, and if he do they’re his childern so well as mine. I get faint now and then.” “I don’t wonder,” said the other. “Do you by any chance ever open a window here?”