So I have yoked to mine when, enter my mother, looking wistful.
'I suppose you are terrible thrang,' she says.
'Well, I am rather busy, but--what is it you want me to do ?' 'It would be a shame to ask you.' 'Still, ask me.' 'I am so terrified they may be filed.' 'You want me to-- ?' 'If you would just come up, and help me to fold the sheets!' The sheets are folded and I return to Albert.

I lock the door, and at last I am bringing my hero forward nicely (my knee in the small of his back), when this startling question is shot by my sister through the key-hole-- 'Where did you put the carrot-grater ?' It will all have to be done over again if I let Albert go for a moment, so, gripping him hard, I shout indignantly that I have not seen the carrot-grater.
'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 senseless.' 'Oh, it's that weary writing.' 'And the worst of it is he will talk to-morrow as if he had done wonders.' 'That's the way with the whole clanjam-fray of them.' 'Yes, but as usual you will humour him, mother.' 'Oh, well, it pleases him, you see,' says my mother, 'and we can have our laugh when his door's shut.' 'He is most terribly handless.' 'He is all that, but, poor soul, he does his best.'.