Re-Creations by Grace Livingston Hill Read Free Book Online Page B

the kitchen, it was in making bread. Somehow it did not seem as though things were on a right basis until she had some bread on the way. As she crumbled the yeast cake into a sauce dish and put it a-soak, she began to hum a little tune, yet her mind was so preoccupied with what she had to do that she scarcely remembered it was the theme of the music that ran all through the college play. College life had somehow receded for the present, and in place of costumes and drapery she was considering what she ought to make and bake in order to have the pantry and refrigerator well stocked, and how soon she might with a clear conscience go upstairs and start clearing up Carey’s bedroom. She couldn’t settle rightly to anything until that awful mess was straightened out. The consciousness of the disorder up there in the third story was like a bruise that had been given her, which made itself more and more felt as the minutes passed.
    When the cover was put down tight on the bread-raiser, Cornelia looked about her.
    “I really ought to clean this kitchen first,” she said thoughtfully, speaking aloud as if she and herself were having it out about the work. “There aren’t enough dishes unpacked for the family to eat comfortably, but there’s not room on those shelves for them if they were unpacked.”
    So, with a glance at the rapidly rising gingerbread that let out a whiff of delicious aroma, she mounted on a chair and began to clear off the top shelves of the dresser. It seemed as if there had been no system whatever in placing things. Bottles of shoe polish, a hammer, a box of gingersnaps, a can of putty, and several old neckties were settled in between glass sauce dishes and the electric iron. She kept coming on little necessities. With small ceremony she swept them all down to an orderly row on the floor on the least-used side of the room, and with soap, hot water, and a scrubbing brush went at the shelves. It didn’t take long, of course, but she put a great deal of energy into the work and began to feel actually happy as she smelled the clean soapsuds and saw what a difference it made in the shabby, paintless shelves to get rid of the dirt.
    “Now, we’ve at least got a spot to put things!” she announced as she took the gingerbread tins out of the oven and with great satisfaction noted that she had not forgotten how to make gingerbread in the interval of her college days.
    The gingerbread reminded her that she had as yet had no breakfast, but she would not mar the velvet beauty of those fragrant loaves of gingerbread by cutting one now. She cut off a slice of the dry end of a loaf and buttered it. She was surprised to find how good it tasted as she ate it going about her work, picking up what dishes on the floor belonged back on the shelves, and washing and arranging them. Later, if there was time, she would unpack more dishes, but she must get up to Carey’s room. It was like leaving something dead about uncovered, to know that that room looked so above her head.
    It was twelve o’clock when she at last got permission of herself to go upstairs, and she carried with her broom, mop, soap, scrubbing brush, and plenty of hot water and old cloths. She paused at the door of the front room long enough to rummage in the bureau drawers and get out an old allover gingham apron of her mother’s, which she donned before ascending to the third floor.
    In the doorway of her brother’s room she stood appalled once more, scarcely knowing where to begin. Then, putting down her brushes and pails in the hall, she started in at the doorway, picking up the first things that came in her way. Clothes first. She sorted them out quickly, hanging the good things on the railing of the stairs, the worn and soiled ones in piles on the floor, ready for the laundry, the ragman, and the mending basket. When the garments were all out, she turned back, and the room seemed to be just as full and just as messy as it had been before. She began