"Why, didn't you know Hannah Smith had gone to work for the widow Orville?" inquired Mrs. Fleetfoot, looking up from the blue yarn sock she was knitting, which was destined, no doubt, to convert some half-naked Burman boy from the errors of paganism. "La, I heard of it a fortnight ago!"
"You did,—did you, Mrs. Fleetfoot?" exclaimed Mrs. Sykes, in rather a hasty tone; for a mild-hearted Christian; "well, she hasn't been gone from me a week yet."
"Do tell! Well, I heard she thought of going, then, or something like it, I can't exactly remember what," drawled Mrs. Feetfoot, not a whit disconcerted by the contradiction her words had received.
"So Mrs. Orville coaxed Hannah away from you?" said Miss Jerusha.
"Yes, just as the summer's work was coming on, too; but she'll have to suffer for it," said Mrs. Sykes, with a fearfully resigned expression of countenance.
"Of course she will," returned Miss Sharpwell; "but what could Mrs. Orville want with a hired girl,—nobody but herself and Alice in the family? It seems a selfish, malicious desire to inconvenience you, her coaxing Hannah off."
"La!" put in Mrs. Fleetwood, "didn't you know Mrs. Orville had got a whole houseful of company from the south? I knew it a month ago."
"She hasn't got anybody in the world but two cousins of Alice's, and a husband of one of them, and they haven't been there a week, till to-morrow evening," said Mrs. Sykes.
"O, is that all? Well, I heard something about it, I couldn't exactly recollect what it was," again drawled Mrs. Fleetfoot, closing the toe of her yarn sock, and holding it up to admire the proportions; no doubt breathing a silent prayer that it might be useful in saving some "soul from death."
"Well, Mrs. Fleetfoot," observed Mrs. Sykes, "did you know that Fred. Milder had come home from Texas to marry Alice Orville?"