“Then let’s talk business,” returned Miss Rindy, herself taking a seat. “You spoke of taking a cook along. Would it be possible to engage one of your grandmother’s servants? If her house is to be closed, it might be a good idea.”
Mabel shook her head. “Wouldn’t do at all. They are all so high and mighty that any one of them would leave on the first boat. They would scorn a simple way of living, and would require all sorts of things that Beatty’s Island doesn’t furnish. No, no, we must have a different sort.”
“Why not Beulah?” Ellen spoke up. “She is a nice comfortable kind, used to our ways, and I believe she would be willing to go.”
“Where is she? Where is she?” asked Mabel eagerly.
“She’ll be along after a while; she is not one given to undue haste, but she gets there in course of time. Slow and steady wins the race, you know. She is no sylph, and large bodies move slowly.”
“I don’t care how big she is, so she does our work, is a good cook, and is clean and honest.”
“She is all that. Her chief fault is an overgrown idea of her own importance, but Cousin Rindy knows how to manage her, and it would be all right if we could induce her to go.”
“And stay,” put in Miss Rindy grimly.
The upshot of the matter was that Beulah consented to go, though not without some demur. “It terrible fur off, ain’t it?” she protested. “Are it crost dem waters where you went to tend de sojers, Miss Rindy?”
“O dear, no,” Miss Rindy reassured her. “I was days in crossing, and here we shall leave one afternoon and get there the next day at noon, Miss Wickham tells us.”