That was after a drive into Maritzburg along a road
ploughed up by ox-wagons. Still, I felt no uneasiness. What is a cotton
gown made for if not to be washed? Away it goes to the wash! What is
this limp, discolored rag which returns to me iron-moulded, blued until
it is nearly black, rough-dried, starched in patches, with the fringe of
red earth only more firmly fixed than before? Behold my favorite ivory
cotton! My white gowns are even in a worse plight, for there are no two
yards of them the same, and the grotesque mixture of extreme yellowness,
extreme blueness and a pervading tinge of the red mud they have been
washed in renders them a piteous example of misplaced confidence. Other
things fare rather better--not much--but my poor gowns are only hopeless
wrecks, and I am reduced to some old yachting dresses of ticking and
serge. The price of washing, as this spoiling process is pleasantly
called, is enormous, and I exhaust my faculties in devising more
economical arrangements. We can't wash at home, for the simple reason
that we have no water, no proper appliances of any sort, and to build
and buy such would cost a small fortune. But a tall, white-aproned
Kafir, with a badge upon his arm, comes now at daylight every Monday
morning and takes away a huge sackful of linen, which is placed, with
sundry pieces of soap and blue in its mouth, all ready for him. He
brings it back in the afternoon full of clean and dry linen, for which
he receives three shillings and sixpence.
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