The Book Of Small

All our Sundays were exactly alike. They began on Saturday
night after Bong the Chinaboy had washed up and gone
away, after our toys, dolls and books, all but _The Peep
of Day_ and Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, had been stored
away in drawers and boxes till Monday, and every Bible
and prayer-book in the house was puffing itself out,
looking more important every minute.

Then the clothes-horse came galloping into the kitchen
and straddled round the stove inviting our clean clothes
to mount and be aired. The enormous wooden tub that looked
half coffin and half baby-bath was set in the middle of
the kitchen floor with a rag mat for dripping on laid
close beside it. The great iron soup pot, the copper
wash-boiler and several kettles covered the top of the
stove, and big sister Dede filled them by working the
kitchen pump-handle furiously. It was a sad old pump
and always groaned several times before it poured. Dede
got the brown Windsor soap, heated the towels and put on
a thick white apron with a bib. Mother unbuttoned us and
by that time the pots and kettles were steaming.

Dede scrubbed hard. If you wriggled, the flat of the
long-handled tin dipper came down spanking on your skin.

As soon as each child was bathed Dede took it pick-a-back
and rushed it upstairs through the cold house. We were
allowed to say our prayers kneeling in bed on Saturday
night, steamy, brown-windsory prayers--then we cuddled
down and tumbled very comfortably into Sunday.

At seven o'clock Father stood beside our bed and said,
"Rise up! Rise up! It's Sunday, children." He need not
have told us; we knew Father's Sunday smell--Wright's
coal-tar soap and camphor. Father had a splendid chest
of camphor-wood which had come from England round the
Horn in a sailing-ship with him. His clean clothes lived
in it and on Sunday he was very camphory. The chest was
high and very heavy. It had brass handles and wooden
knobs. The top let down as a writing desk with
pigeon-holes; below there were little drawers for
handkerchiefs and collars and long drawers for clothes.
On top of the chest stood Father's locked desk for papers.
The key of it was on his ring with lots of others. This
desk had a secret drawer and a brass plate with R. H.
CARR engraved on it.

On top of the top desk stood the little Dutchman, a china
figure with a head that took off and a stomach full of
little candies like colored hailstones. If we had been
very good all week we got hailstones Sunday morning.

Family prayers were uppish with big words on Sunday
--reverend Awe-full words that only God and Father
understood.

No work was done in the Carr house on Sunday. Everything
had been polished frightfully on Saturday and all Sunday's
food cooked too. On Sunday morning Bong milked the cow
and went away from breakfast until evening milking-time.
Beds were made, the dinner-table set, and then we got
into our very starchiest and most uncomfortable clothes
for church.

Our family had a big gap in the middle of it where William,
John and Thomas had all been born and died in quick
succession, which left a wide space between Dede and
Tallie and the four younger children.

Lizzie, Alice and I were always dressed exactly alike.
Father wanted my two big sisters to dress the same, but
they rebelled, and Mother stood behind them. Father
thought we looked like orphans if we were clothed
differently. The Orphans sat in front of us at church.
No two of them had anything alike. People gave them all
the things their own children had grown out of--some of
them were very strange in shape and color.