"I don't believe our 'other servants' would know what to do with her," said Barbara. "There's always such a crowd in our kitchen."
"Barbara, you're a plague!"
"Yes. I'm the thorn in the flesh in this family, lest it should be exalted above measure; and like Saint Paul, I magnify mine office."
"In the way we live," said Mrs. Holabird, "it is really more convenient to let a seamstress come right to table with us; and besides, you know what I think about it. It is a little breath of life to a girl like that; she gets something that we can give as well as not, and that helps her up. It comes naturally, as it cannot come with 'other servants.' She sits with us all day; her work is among ladies, and with them; she gets something so far, even in the midst of measuring and gorings, that common housemaids cannot get; why shouldn't she be with us when we can leave off talk of measures and gores, and get what Ruth calls the 'very next'? Delia Waite is too nice a girl to be put into the kitchen to eat with Katty, in her 'crowd.'"
"But it seems to set us down; it seems common in us to be so ready to be familiar with common people. More in us, because we do live plainly. If Mrs. Hadden or Mrs. Marchbanks did it, it might seem kind without the common. I think they ought to begin such things."
"But then if they don't? Very likely it would be far more inconvenient for them; and not the same good either, because it would be, or seem, a condescension. We are the 'very next,' and we must be content to be the step we are."
"It's the other thing with us,—con-ascension,—isn't it, mother? A step up for somebody, and no step down for anybody. Mrs. Ingleside does it," Ruth added.
"O, Mrs. Ingleside does all sorts of things. She has that sort of position. It's as independent as the other. High moral and high social can do anything. It's the betwixt and between that must be careful."
"What a miserably negative set we are, in such a positive state of the world!" cried Barbara. "Except Ruth's music, there isn't a specialty among us; we haven't any views; we're on the mean-spirited side of the Woman Question; 'all woman, and no question,' as mother says; we shall never preach, nor speech, nor leech; we can't be magnificent, and we won't be common! I don't see what is to become of us, unless—and I wonder if maybe that isn't it?—we just do two or three rather right things in a no-particular sort of a way."
"Barbara, how nice you are!" cried Ruth.