g
in one who is writing a book about them."

"Oh, I have no doubt I am very ignorant," said Minora loftily.

"Seasons of washing," explained Irais, "are seasons set apart by the
Hausfrau to be kept holy. They only occur every two or three months,
and while they are going on the whole house is in an uproar, every other
consideration sacrificed, husband and children sunk into insignificance,
and no one approaching, or interfering with the mistress of the house
during these days of purification, but at their peril."

"You Don't Really Mean," Said Minora, "that You Only Wash Your Clothes
Four Times A Year?

"Yes, I do mean it," replied Irais.

"Well, I think that is very disgusting," said Minora emphatically.

Irais raised those pretty, delicate eyebrows of hers. "Then you must
take care and not marry a German," she said.

"But what is the object of it?" went on Minora.

"Why, to clean the linen, I suppose."

"Yes, yes, but why only at such long intervals?"

"It is an outward and visible sign of vast possessions in the shape of
linen. If you were to want to have your clothes washed every week, as
you do in England, you would be put down as a person who only has just
enough to last that length of time, and would be an object of general
contempt."

"But I should be a clean object," cried Minora, "and my house would not
be full of accumulated dirt."

We said nothing--there was nothing to be said.

"It must be a happy land, that England of yours," Irais remarked after
a while with a sigh--a beatific vision no doubt presenting itself to
her mind of a land full of washerwomen and agile gentlemen darting at
door-handles.

"It is a clean land, at any rate," replied Minora.

"I don't want to go and live in it," I said--for we were driving up to
the house, and a memory of fogs and umbrellas came into my mind as I
looked up fondly at its dear old west front, and I felt that what I
want is to live and die just here, and that there never was such a happy
woman as Elizabeth.

April 18th.--I have been so busy ever since Irais and Minora left that
I can hardly believe the spring is here, and the garden hurrying on its
green and flowered petticoat--only its petticoat as yet, for though the
underwood is a fairyland of tender little leaves, the trees above are
still quite bare.

February was gone before I well knew that it had come, so deeply was
I engaged in making hot-beds, and having them sown with petunias,
verben