per between the andirons, covering all the ashes
which lay there so they did not show. On this they laid kindling,
crossed, and then some pieces of wood. When they gathered up the
newspaper there was nothing to brush from the carpet, and everything was
neat.

"There," said her aunt, "that's all for to-day. Run and wash your face
and hands,--they need it!"

CHAPTER VIII

HOUSECLEANING; CELLAR AND ATTIC

Margaret's Saturday morning lessons were interrupted at this point by
the spring housecleaning. Everybody was so busy taking up and putting
down carpets, hanging curtains and pictures over, putting away winter
clothes and getting out summer ones, that the lessons seemed forgotten.
The grandmother, however, remembered, and one day she took the little
girl around the house while the cleaning was going on, showing her how
the work was done. They found the guest-room had been finished, so they
sat down there and talked.

"Housecleaning is very different nowadays from what it used to be," she
began. "We used to take up all the carpets at once, and keep everything
upset for a week or two, and then get all to rights. Now we take a room
at a time, and so do the whole house gradually and comfortably. Perhaps
the work is divided, and part done in the spring and part in the fall,
to make it still easier. Then we do not take up every carpet every year,
as we did. This guest-room carpet, for one, does not need beating and
cleaning and putting down again, because the room is not used all the
time, and once or twice a year it has a scrubbing with warm water or
turpentine or ammonia after it is swept."

"Yes," said Margaret, "I learned about that in my sweeping lesson."

"When this room was cleaned," her grandmother went on, "the curtains
were taken down, and the pictures wiped off and put into the storeroom.
The furniture was well dusted and put away also, and the bed all taken
apart, the mattress beaten gently, the springs dusted and wiped off; the
bed slats were washed in hot soap and water, and put away, too. Then the
bed itself was taken to pieces and washed in warm soap-suds, because
being white iron they could not hurt it. If it had been a wooden bed it
would have been wiped with a damp cloth. And then, Margaret, what do you
think? a brush dipped in turpentine was put in all the corners of the
bed and the springs, so that if by any chance a little bug should have
crept in there to hide, it would be driven out."