SLAPDASH SALLY.

Waikato Times, Volume 117, Issue 19545, 6 April 1935, Page 16 (Supplement)

SLAPDASH SALLY.

'• ' a ' f (By Camilla Carlisle.)'

• [OCtonttcrued fbom last week.) Sally got the Job, She went home triumphantly that afternoon to tell her ®QOther and pack her clothes, and returned next day to Crabtree Grange all afire with determination to do her (very beat. - And she had not been In the house ten minutes before she discovered that she had been tricked. She was no kennel maid.

To be sure her duties did Include taking five little dogs for an airing every day, and .brushing and feeding them, but this was but a very tiny part of her work. No other servants were kept except the grimy Ethel, who was not pleasant .company. Mrs Marsh, who was stout and red-faoed and worrled-lookipg, did a little herself in the house. Mr Marsh, who was small and pale and querulous, did nothing at all. 'He used to sit hour after hour by a -skimpy fire, reading and re-reading his ancient books, which he told Sally used to belong to Ihls father and grandfather before him. “ They are misers, them two," explained Ethel, jerking her thumb contemptuously towards the door of the Marsh’s sitting-room. “Now you knows what to expeot. (Nothing to eat -and everything to do. I should trot off home If I was you." Sally, however, did not trot off home. She had not been promised a high -salary, but she was to have some; and she soon found she would 'have hardly -enough to eat, hut at least she was saving her mother her keep. She made up her mind to stick it as long as she could.

. Ethel, 'with her slovenly ways, was almost unbearable, and she often “popped out,” as she called It, and did not return for an hour or more. Sally wondered what she did, until one day ahe found she “popped out” to meet a ,flashy-looklng man at the bottom of the garden. It was none of Sally’s business (as Ethel pointed out with much energy), but Sally did not like the look of that man. She was thankful when the time oame for Ethel to leave, and a woman came in for an hour or so every morning to clean up i—a bright, bustling, youngish woman who lived near with her husband, who .was temporarily out of work. “Not that Charlie will be out of work long," declared Mrs Cox proudly. •“He isn’t that sort, my Charlie isn’t. He’ll And work somehow, scarce as it la, and he wouldn't have lost his job but for the people leaving the plaoe.”

Mrs Cox soon restored cleanliness to the kitohen premises, and did as muoh as she was allowed to do to tho musty, dusty old rooms where the elderly oouple sat with their books and their dogs. Sally no longer yearned to run away homo, as she had done a dozen times a day when Ethel held sway In the kitchen. She began—rather shyly at first —to offer to help with the cooking, and, her services being gratefully accepted, sho soon took on nearly all of it. There was little enough, as Mr and Mrs Marsh seemed hardly to want anything to eat! Sally wished her own appetite were not so Insistent; she oould have eaten twice the amount Mrs Marsh offered her. “I’m afraid I’m getting rather greedy,” she sighed one day, as sho popped a dainty (but dreadfully small) fruit tart In the oven. “Greedy? Not you,” said Mrs Cox consolingly. “Growing girls need food, and lots of it. But, my word, Miss Sally, you aro i.a splendid cook. And so neat, and tidy’with it all, too.” Sally pul down her ovtjfi cloth and just gaped at cheery Mrs Cox. “Neat? Tidy?” she exclaimed. “You don’t mean that? You are Just laughing at me, Mrs Cox."

"Indeed and I'm not, then," retorted the good woman warmly. “Look at tho way you put things away if you do a bit of cooking, and wipe up overy speck ns you go along. Look at tho way you keep your room—as neat as a new pin." .■sally sighed. “Oh. if only Miss Linton could hear you !” Miss Linlon would certainly have endorsed Mrs Cox’s good opinion. For y.dlv had. all at oiioo, become remarknldv tidy without voalming it in the Vas|. l|* was Ihe natural revulsion from the disgusting muddle which she bud endured for the fortnight of Eiliel's stay iu the house.

Now that Mrs Cox praised her for the very qualities for lack of which she had so often been scolded, she felt tremendously encouraged. And she began to try harder to have the rooms as bright and neat as she could, and to keep her -oloth.es tidier. . Sally, however, was still Sally the Slapdash. She put borax instead of carbonate of soda in the buns one day, and left her dustpan on the stairs for Mrs Marsh to fall over, and romped with the dogs as wildly as she used to romp with her little brothers and sisters. But she was growing more and more capable every day, despite these lapses. “But we ought to have someone bigger In the house at nights,” was Mrs Marsh’s continual wall ever since Ethel left. “My husband is so delicate, and he is over seventy. What use would he be in oase of burglars breaking in?”

“I shouldn’t worry about burglars, especially as you have five dogs,” said Sally consolingly. She thought the ramshackle old house would hardly attract anyone. “But we do worry; that Is the only reason we keep all those dogs—-eating us out of house and home! Ethel was impudent and -slovenly, but she was a strong active girl, and would have protected us.”

“I wonder,” murmured Sally thoughtfully. She was thinking about that flashy-looklng man who used to whistle to Ethel from the garden, and whom Ethel used to pop out so often to meet. Sally didn’t like that man, neither, for the matter of that, did she like Ethel.

And she loved the live dogs. There was one Sealyham'one Cairn, and three nondescript terriers. Each had his own basket and his own great thick collar, and when Sally tried to remove the collar from Taffy, the smallest dog of all, in order to give it a much-needed clean, Taffy snapped at her.

It was the only time any of the dogs had done so, and Taffy seemed quite ashamed of himself, but Mrs Marsh, who was in the room, exclaimed in horror;

“Never try to take off their collars —never! My husband has trained them all to bite anyone who tries that. Oh, Sally, do be careful, I wouldn’t have them bite you for worlds 1” “ftm all right,” said Sally, “but ■the collars all want polishing up; and aren’t they much too heavy for such little dogs?” “They guard the dogs’ throats If they start lighting. As you see, it Is very seldom there Is any disagreement, but with five dogs there must be some precautions taken.” “ But ” '

“My husband' trained them all when they were' quite tiny puppies never to allow anyone oxoept himself or me to remove their collars, because you see they aro such beautiful collars —lovely leather, and so handsome and strong with their brass studs. Lots of people- might try to steal them for their own dogs.” (To be continued next week.)