"Now We Shan't Be Long," Said Johnny, And Cheon, Believing Him, Expressed
Great Admiration For Johnny, And Superintended The Scrubbing Of The
Walls, While I Sat And Sewed, Yard After Yard Of Oversewing, As Never
Woman Sewed Before.
The walls were erected on what is known as the drop-slab-panel
system - upright panels formed of three-
Foot slabs cut from the outside
slice of tree trunks, and dropped horizontally, one above the other,
between grooved posts - a simple arrangement, quickly run up and artistic
in appearance - outside, a horizontally fluted surface, formed by the
natural curves of the timber, and inside, flat, smooth walls. As in
every third panel there was a door or a window, and as the horizontal
slabs stopped within two feet of the ceiling, the building was
exceedingly airy, and open on all sides.
Cheon, convinced that the system was all Johnny's was delighted with his
ingenuity. But as he insisted on the walls being scrubbed as soon as
they were up, and before the doors and windows were in, Johnny had one or
two good duckings, and narrowly escaped many more; for lubras' methods of
scrubbing are as full of surprises as all their methods.
First soap is rubbed on the dry boards, then vigorously scrubbed into a
lather with wet brushes, and after that the lather is sluiced off with
artificial waterspouts whizzed up the walls from full buckets. It was
while the sluicing was in progress that Johnny had to be careful; for
many buckets missed their mark, and the waterspouts shot out through the
doorways and window frames.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 142 of 304
Words from 38900 to 39166
of 84691
