"What are you playin'?" she asked.
They told her.
"Can you play it?" Mildred Bates asked.
"I guess I can," Pearl said modestly. "But I'm always
too busy for games like that!"
"Maudie Ducker says you never play," Mildred Bates said
with pity in her voice.
"Maudie Ducker is away off there," Pearl answered with
dignity. "I have more fun in one day than Maudie Ducker'll
ever have if she lives to be as old as Melchesidick, and
it's not this frowsy standin'-round-doin'-nothin' that
you kids call fun either."
"Tell us about it, Pearl," they shouted eagerly. Pearl's
stories had a charm.
"Well," Pearl began, "ye know I wash Mrs. Evans's dishes
every day, and lovely ones they are, too, all pink and
gold with dinky little ivy leaves crawlin' out over the
edges of the cups. I play I am at the seashore and the
tide is comin' in o'er and o'er the sand and 'round and
'round the land, far as eye can see--that's out of a
book. I put all the dishes into the big dish pan, and I
pertend the tide is risin' on them, though it's just me
pourin' on the water. The cups are the boys and the
saucers are the girls, the plates are the fathers and
mothers and the butter chips are the babies. Then I rush
in to save them, but not until they cry 'Lord save us,
we perish!' Of course, I yell it for them, good and loud
too--people don't just squawk at a time like that--it
often scares Mrs. Evans even yet. I save the babies first,
I slush them around to clean them, but they never notice
that, and I stand them up high and dry in the drip-pan.
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