"
"What'd I be kneelin' on the stairs for, at four o'clock in the mornin',
I should like to know?"
"It looked like you was brushin' 'em down."
"_Me_ brushin' down _Snyder's_ stairs! Well, now what do you think o'
that?" Her tone of amazement, at the mere possibility, struck Cora, and
there was a pause, broken at length by Martha, in a preternaturally
solemn voice. "I s'pose you never tumbled to it I might be _prayin'_."
Cora's eyes grew wide. "Prayin'!" she repeated in an awed whisper. "But,
mother, what'd you want to go out in the hall for, to pray on the
_stairs_, at four o'clock in the mornin'?"
"Prayin' is a godly ack. Wheresomedever, an' _when_somedever you do it."
"But, mother, I don't _believe_ you were prayin'. I heard the knockin'
o' your whis'-broom. You was brushin' down the stairs."
"Well, what if I was? Cleanliness is next to godliness, ain't it?
Prayin' an' cleanin', it amounts to the same thing in the end--it's just
a question of what you clean, outside you or _in_."
"But say, now, listen, mother, you never cleaned down Mr.
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