[CHAPTER XVIII.]
A CHAPTER OF SHREDS AND PATCHES.
Monday morning found the young people at the Sanford cottage in rather indifferent spirits. When the sun, after having fought his way through clouds to do so, awoke Patty, the sound which his beams evoked from her lips was not, like that of Memnon, a note of joy, but a sigh. Flossy announced at breakfast a severe attack of her dyspepsia, caused, she declared, by the sermon to which she had listened at Samoset.
"It was a dreadfully hard sermon," she said, "and had more heads than a hydra. I'm not used to such things, and it's no wonder it made me ill."
"I didn't hear it," Will remarked; "but it has given me a headache all the same. It must be because I have so many ideas. I shall lose my wits with the pain some day, I've no doubt."
"If you do," Floss retorted, "you can advertise for them as of no use but to the owner, like private papers."
"What nonsense you two talk!" grandmother Sanford said mildly. "Dost thee think, William, that friend Putnam has secured my pension yet?"
"I will try to find out to-day, grandmother, after I've driven mother over to call on the young and lovely bride, Mrs. Bathalina Peter Clemens Mixon."
From the time of the sudden and romantic departure of Bathalina, the life of Mrs. Sanford had been made a burden by the trial of new servants. She utterly refused to have anybody about her who was Irish; yet the servants she had tried had proved alike a weariness to the flesh and a vexation to the spirit. They were principally farmers' daughters, who "never thought o' livin' out, but would stop a spell, jes' to 'commodate." In Montfield everybody knew his neighbor's affairs; and the friends of the family had been sending in a continuous stream of candidates, or messages respecting girls they thought might be available, or concerning people who might know of girls to hire, or have heard of somebody who did. Even Mrs. Brown at length became aware of the vacancy in the Sanfords' kitchen, and sent over a girl whom she recommended as being all that the most exacting could desire. It proved to be the same amiable domestic who had dealt such destruction among Mrs. Brown's hairpins; and for various reasons her first morning at the doctor's cottage was also her last.