She went singing about her work. She felt important and grown-
up, extraordinarily light-hearted too. The things she sang made up
their own words--such odd snatches that came she knew not whence. An
insect clung to her duster, and she shook it out of the window with
the crumbs and bits of cotton gathered from the table-cloth.
'Get out, you Morning Spider,
You fairy-cotton rider!'
she sang, and at the same minute Mother opened the bedroom door and
peeped in, astonished at the unaccustomed music. In her voluminous
dressing-gown, her hair caught untidily in a loose net, her face
flushed from stooping over the porridge saucepan, she looked, thought
Jinny, 'like a haystack somehow.' Of course she did not say it. The
draught, flapping at her ample skirts, added the idea of a covering
tarpaulin to the child's mental picture. She went on dusting with a
half-offended air, as though Mother had no right to interrupt her with
a superintending glance like this.
'You won't forget the sweeping too, Jinny?' said Mother, retiring
again majestically with that gliding motion her abundant proportions
achieved so gracefully.
'Of course I won't, Mother,' and the instant the door was closed she
fell into another snatch of song, the words of which flowed
unconsciously into her mind, it seemed--
'For I'm a tremendously busy Sweep,
Dusting the room while you're all asleep,
And shoving you all in the rubbish heap,
Over the edge of the tiles'
--a little wumbled, it is true, but its source unmistakable.
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