Squire Nathan Fifield, the middle-aged brother who with the two middle-aged sisters made up the Fifield family, caustically remarked that he should think two able-bodied women could do the work for themselves and one man, but if they couldn’t they would have to settle the matter their own way. “Only,” he warned them, “it is very likely this is the child of low-bred foreigners, and if she turns out to be a little liar, and a thief, I want you to remember that it was you that brought her here, not me.”
But the sisters, noways daunted by this foreboding, offered Rose the place and, as we have seen, she accepted the offer.
CHAPTER XV
AT THE FIFIELDS’
The Fifields were the oldest family in Farmdale, and lived in the most pretentious house. Rose had greatly admired the old home with its high-pillared porch set behind tall hedges of prim cedar, and a view of the interior only increased the feeling. To her eyes the claw-footed tables and tall bedsteads with canopy tops were most imposing; and the dimly lighted, seldom used parlor with its real lace curtains, its carpet laid in great wreaths of roses, its gilt-framed mirror, and its damask upholstered, mahogany furniture, was a really magnificent apartment, including as it did the family portraits, and Miss Eudora’s girlish efforts at painting on velvet.
Rose’s position in the family had been the subject of some discussion, for Eudora Fifield had all her life sighed for a maid arrayed in a white cap and apron, and it had been one of her numerous grievances that of the array of independent spirited help who had filed in and out of the Fifield kitchen one and all had flatly refused to conform to such usage.
“But Rose,” she argued, “has been brought up in a city, where the manners of the lower classes are so different. Why, when I visited Aunt Morgan in Albany, her servants treated me with a deference you never see here. Her parlor-maid always brought in the callers’ cards and the letters on a salver; perhaps she would be willing to do that.”
Jane Fifield gave a snort, “As long as Nathan brings your letters in his coat pocket and hands them to you, and we haven’t a caller once a month, I think you won’t have much use for a salver. Besides the Blossoms make her one of the family, and Mrs. Blossom particularly said that she should never consent to her going to any place where she would not be taken an interest in, but simply thought of as a little drudge.”
Miss Eudora drew a little sigh at the vanishing of the cap and salver, but quickly caught herself as she remembered the dish-washing. “Well,” she admitted, “I suppose it’s better to concede some points than not have her come at all.”
“I wonder,” suddenly spoke Silence Blossom as she sat basting the facing on a skirt the day after Rose left, “how Rose is getting on at the Fifields’, and if she has heard anything yet about Eudora’s visit to Albany? I don’t believe I’ve seen her any time since that she hasn’t made some reference to it. I have often wondered what she would have done if she hadn’t made that visit.”