Veva said: "I'd like to throw the dishes away after every meal. If a
fairy would offer _me_ three wishes the first one I'd make would be
never to touch a dishcloth again so long as I lived."

"Oh, Veva!" exclaimed Marjorie. "Think of the lovely china the Enderbys
have, and the glass which came to Mrs. Curtis from her
great-grandmother. Would you like a piece of that to be broken if it
were yours?"

"No-o-o!" acknowledged Veva. "But our dishes are not so sacred, and our
Bridgets break them regularly. We are always having to buy new ones as
it is. Mamma groans, and sister Constance sighs, and Aunt Ernie scolds,
but the dishes go."

"Mother thinks that the old-fashioned gentlewomen, who used to wash the
breakfast things themselves, were very sensible and womanly."

Eva shrugged her plump shoulders, but took a towel to wipe the silver. I
had gathered up the dishes, and taken my own way of going about this
piece of work.

First I took a pan of hot water in which I had dissolved a bit of soap,
and I attacked the disagreeable things--the saucepans and broilers and
pots and pans. They are very useful, but they are not ornamental. All
nice housekeepers are very particular to cleanse them thoroughly,
removing every speck of grease from both the outside and the inside, and
drying them until they shine.

It isn't worth while to ruin your hands or make them coarse and rough
when washing pots and pans. I use a mop, and do not put my hands into