Ellen lay uncomfortably on her hard bed. She was bruised and sore, but she was excited and happy. No one else would have contemplated the change in her fortunes with satisfaction. From being the center of the world, she had become merely an unmarried sister-in-law, then a clerk in a store, then a mangler in a laundry, and now a housemaid, written down in Mrs. Fetzer's housekeeping book as "Ellen Lewis."
But she believed that the tide of fortune had turned. She counted on her fingers the black and white employees whom Fetzer had mentioned. Fetzer had also said that extra women came to do the hardest cleaning. Surely there would be time to study!
Kept awake by her aching bones she saw a smoothly flowing river and a little table with books and tablets and neatly sharpened pencils.
CHAPTER XX
MASTER AND MISTRESS
Fetzer, though small of stature and retiring of mien, had no misgivings about her ability to manage the Lanfair house. Her instructions to Ellen were given with as much positiveness and intimacy of detail as though human destinies waited upon the tying of an apron string.
She stood with Ellen at the head of the broad main stairway leading from the lower hall to the second floor, on every hand closed mysterious doors, and there admonished her. The early morning was bright and the river sparkled in the sun. Ellen's body was sore, but her spirit marched bravely.
"Now, what you don't need of this you don't have to take to yourself." Fetzer cocked her smooth head upon one side and looked at Ellen, her eye expressing increasing satisfaction with her acolyte. "I give always this instruction; some don't like it, but they do it; others don't like it and they leave, and I'm glad they're gone—what lumps I had already—oh, my! Well, a bath every day, morning, afternoon, or night, it makes no difference, but a bath." Mrs. Fetzer liked to say "bath"; the th was an achievement, v she had not conquered. "In the morning a blue dress and white apron—every day a clean one, you don't have to do the washing nor yet the ironing. In the afternoon a black dress and a little apron and cap. I have some you can borrow. Rubber heels on your shoes and always a low woice. It should be our object in such a position to be as little seen and heard as possible with faithfulness to our duty." The last sentence had been memorized from "The Expert Maid and How to Train Her." "We speak when we are spoken to and we hear nothing that is not meant for us to hear. The mistress in a well-conducted home respects the independence of her maid and the maid respects the independence of her mistress. The two spheres are on the same plane, but they do not commingle.
"Now we go through the house." She spoke more briskly, glad that the theoretical portion of her address was safely delivered. "This is her sitting-room."