'Then what did you grate the carrots on?' asks the voice, and the
door-handle is shaken just as I shake Albert.

'On a broken cup,' I reply with surprising readiness, and I get to
work again but am less engrossed, for a conviction grows on me that
I put the carrot-grater in the drawer of the sewing-machine.

I am wondering whether I should confess or brazen it out, when I
hear my sister going hurriedly upstairs. I have a presentiment
that she has gone to talk about me, and I basely open my door and
listen.

'Just look at that, mother!'

'Is it a dish-cloth?'

'That's what it is now.'

'Losh behears! it's one of the new table-napkins.'

'That's what it was. He has been polishing the kitchen grate with
it!'

(I remember!)

'Woe's me! That is what comes of his not letting me budge from
this room. O, it is a watery Sabbath when men take to doing
women's work!'

'It defies the face of clay, mother, to fathom what makes him so