“Is she just a servant?” asked Isabel when they heard her heavy tread down the stairs.
“She isn’t just anything! She’s a jewel! Mother couldn’t do without Millie. We’ve had her almost twenty years. We can leave everything to her and know it will be taken care of. Why, Millie’s as much a part of the family as though she really belonged to it. When Phil and I were little she was always baking us cookies in the shape of men or birds, and they always had big raisin eyes. Millie’s a treasure and we all think of her as being one of the family.”
“Mother says that’s just the reason she won’t hire any Pennsylvania Dutch girls; they always expect to be treated as one of the family. We have colored servants. You can teach them their place.”
“I see. I suppose so,” agreed Amanda, while she mentally appraised the girl before her and thought, “Isabel Souders, a little more democracy wouldn’t be amiss for you.”
Although the boarder who came to the Reist farmhouse was unlike any of the members of the family, she soon won her way into their affections. Her sweet tenderness, her apparent childlike innocence, appealed to the simple, unsuspicious country folk. Shaping her actions in accordance with the old Irish saying, “It’s better to have the dogs of the street for you than against you,” Isabel made friends with Millie and went so far as to pare potatoes for her at busy times. Philip and Uncle Amos were non-committal beyond a mere, “Oh, I guess she’s all right. Good company, and nice to have around.”
The first Sunday of the boarder’s stay in the country she invited herself to accompany the family to Mennonite church. Amanda appeared in a simple white linen dress and a semi-tailored black hat, but when Isabel tripped down the stairs the daughter of the house was quite eclipsed. Isabel’s dark hair was puffed out becomingly about cheeks that had added pink applied to them. In an airy orchid organdie dress and hat to match, white silk stockings and white buckskin pumps, she looked ready for a garden party. According to all the ways of human nature more than one little Mennonite maid in that meeting-house must have cast sidelong glances at the beautiful vision, and older members of the plain sect must have thought the old refrain, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!”
Aunt Rebecca was at church that morning and came to the Reist home for dinner. She sought out Millie in the kitchen and gave her unsolicited, frank opinion--"My goodness, I don’t think much of that there Isabel from Lancaster! She’s too much stuck up. Such a get-up for a Sunday and church like she has on to-day! She looks like a regular peacock. It’ll go good if she don’t spoil our Amanda yet till she goes home.”
“Ach, I guess not. She’s a little fancier than I like to see girls, but then she’s a nice girl and can’t do Amanda no hurt.”
“She means herself too big, that’s what! And them folks ain’t the right kind for Amanda to know. It might spite you all yet for takin’ her in to board. Next thing she’ll be playin’ round with some of the country boys here, and mebbe take one that Amanda would liked to get. There’s no trustin’ such gay dressers. I found that out long a’ready.”
“Ach,” said Millie, “I guess Amanda don’t like none of the boys round here in Crow Hill.”