"I couldn't stay in no place where there wasn't no garding," she said. "My! Ain't you cramped up for room, with a kitchen like a blooming cubby-'ole, and all the places so 'ot that one can't breathe. And no garding! What do you do to get the air?"
"You can put on your things and go for a walk, Katie," said Letitia good-naturedly. "Some of the girls in the house get the air, as you call it, on the roof. Would you like to go up on the roof?"
Miss Smith was much amused. "Crikey!" she cried, "me on the roof! No, thank you, mum. I should get giddy, and that wouldn't do. I'm sorry, Mrs. Fairfax, but I must 'ave a garding, for the sake of me 'ealth. There must be a place where I can stroll of an evening."
So Albion's little lassie left us, and we wired to poor Aunt Julia to tell her that she need not bother to come as there was nothing to come for. We were not more dejected than usual, for we had lost hope, and had ceased to garner expectations.
"Perhaps if I asked our landlord to knock down a few of his houses and plant a garden, we might induce Katie to stay," I suggested sardonically to Letitia. "He owns three or four houses on this block. A very nice garden could be made. I wonder if she would like an old rose garden or if she would be satisfied with any old garden? He might even put in an orchard for her."
Letitia sighed. "Yes, dear," she said. "I feel I ought to laugh at your humor, but you'll forgive me, Archie, won't you, if I fail to discover its value? Katie was really not a bad sort, and it is annoying to think that just because we hadn't a garden—"
"But she couldn't cook, my girl!"
"Of course she couldn't cook. You expect too much, Archie. If she had known how to cook she wouldn't have applied for the position. But she knew how to open the front door, and yesterday, when I asked her to bring me a glass of water, she was able to draw it for me. That, it seems to me, is quite an accomplishment for a New York domestic."
One other attempt we made to stem the tide. Mrs. Archer, who sympathized sincerely with our plight and had grown accustomed to her own, which was similar, had heard of a nice fat orphan from an orphan asylum, who had taken the notion to "live out." (The expression "taking the notion" belongs exclusively to the New York hired lady. It symbolizes her state of mind as new ideas dawn upon it.) So we let in the nice fat orphan, and put her in the kitchen. She was a simple, unsophisticated thing, who had been rigidly educated in an excellent Roman Catholic institution, in blissful ignorance of the world in which she was expected to earn her living later.