“Yes, I know, but at least it is better she should know nothing than know how to do things badly; it is easier to teach than to unteach.”
“All right, my dear, we will go to Castle Garden, then, and interview a new arrival from Germany.”
They did so, and found a thick, short, strong, but stupid-looking girl was the only one whom it seemed possible to take into the house. Molly was a little crestfallen, so far did Marta seem from what she had hoped to meet with. Yet she asked only $10 per month.
“That is $2.00 to the good,” thought Molly, “and by promising her $12 when she can do my work as I wish, she will have something to work for. I believe that is where people make a mistake in our country. The incompetent girls, if they have only impudence enough to ask it, get as good wages as the competent.”
Marta had arrived with two very large trunks, each of them no doubt the Thuringian equivalent for a Saratoga, at which excess of baggage Molly had marveled. Molly had taken her to her room, and told her to go down when ready and begin taking things out of the kitchen closets. This she had heard her doing when Harry had asked when she was to arrive.
Molly found Marta attired in what seemed a green baize skirt, very short; worked zephyr slippers with thick soles, quite new and very large, over gray knitted worsted stockings, also apparently new. Over the skirt she wore a clean cotton camisole or sacque. Evidently Marta was dressed with strict attention to her début in a new place, and was satisfied that her slippers were as attractive as they were no doubt comfortable.
Molly wanted to know exactly what was in the kitchen closets, so that she might see what she had to work with, therefore she had set Marta to clean them out, although Mrs. Winfield had left everything in such excellent order that it was not absolutely necessary this first day.
It was eleven o’clock, and Molly, although she had laughed at Harry’s anxiety to eat bread and cheese, had decided that it would be best to have a luncheon that would be as little trouble as possible, yet one that should not seem at all a makeshift, so sensitive was she to Harry’s good-natured criticism.
She ordered in the morning what she thought might be a month’s supplies of groceries, and for the day’s use:
| 2 heads of lettuce, | $ .06 |
| 1 melon, | .10 |
| 2 quarts peaches, | .12 |
| 1 can of boned chicken, | .50 |
| Forequarter of lamb, 8 pounds, | 1.12 |
| 2 pounds of butter, | .50 |
| 2 dozen eggs, | .50 |
| Total, | $2.90 |