Young Little stared. Mrs. Little smiled.
“Sit down, and never mind us: give him his tea, my good Jael.”
Henry sat down, and, while Jael was making the tea, ventured on a feeble expostulation. “It's all very fine, mother, but I don't like to see you make a slave of yourself.”
“Slaving!” said Jael, with a lofty air of pity. “Why, she is working for her own.” Rural logic!
“Oh,” said Mrs. Little to her, “these clever creatures we look up to so are rather stupid in some things. Slave! Why, I am a general leading my Amazons to victory.” And she waved her needle gracefully in the air.
“Well, but why not let the shop do them, where you bought the curtains?'
“Because, my dear, the shop would do them very badly, very dearly, and very slowly. Do you remember reading to me about Caesar, and what he said—'that a general should not say to his troops “GO and attack the enemy,” “but COME and attack the enemy”?' Well, that applies to needle-work. I say to these ladies, 'COME sew these curtains with me;' and the consequence is, we have done in three days what no shop in Hillsborough would have done for us in a fortnight; but, as for slaves, the only one has been my good Jael there. She insisted on moving all the heavy boxes herself. She dismissed the porter; she said he had no pith in his arms—that was your expression, I think?”
“Ay, ma'am; that was my word: and I never spoke a truer; the useless body. Why, ma'am, the girls in Cairnhope are most of them well-grown hussies, and used to work in the fields, and carry full sacks of grain up steps. Many's the time I have RUN with a sack of barley on my back: so let us hear no more about your bits of boxes. I wish my mind was as strong.”
“Heaven forbid!” said Mrs. Little, with comic fervor. Henry laughed. But Jael only stared, rather stupidly. By-and-by she said she must go now.
“Henry shall take you home, dear.”