Just at this moment the cry of a child commenced in an adjoining room, and continued during the whole of the hostess’s morning work. She set aside the table, and began to sweep the room, raising a great dust from the dried and pulverized mud left by the bachelors’ shoes. Rosalie thoughtlessly threw her pocket-handkerchief over her head, to protect her hair from the dust—thoughtlessly, for else she might have guessed it would displease the touchy pride of the hard-working pioneer woman.
“You don’t like the dust—maybe you never saw a broom?” she asked, looking somewhat contemptuously at the young lady’s delicate person.
“Oh! yes, I have,” said Rosalie, gently, “and used a broom, too; but I always sprinkle the floor, and tie a handkerchief over my head before sweeping.”
“And what do you take all that trouble for?”
“Because I dislike the dust to settle on my hair.”
“Ha! ha! ha! You’ll get out of that, if you settle in these parts,” laughed the woman—not ill-naturedly this time—resuming her broom, and continuing her sweeping to its completion. Then she fired up the cooking-stove afresh; and while it was drawing, and roaring, and heating the room to suffocation in this sultry summer weather, she wiped down the chairs with her apron, and finally went into the next chamber and brought out her baby which was still squalling at the top of his voice. Giving him a piece of bread, she sat him in the cradle and went about her work, notwithstanding that the child threw away the bread, and was screaming louder than ever. Rosalie got up and lifted the babe, and took him to the window, where she sat down with him, and soon soothed his temper. The over-worked mother looked pleased, but said, deprecatingly—
“You needn’t adone that; ’tain’t a bit o’ use; it’ll only spile him. You’ll find ’twon’t do. And if ever you have a house of your own, and a baby of your own, and no one to tend to nyther but yourself—mark my words—just exactly when the loaf of bread is burning up in the oven, and the tea-kettle is boiling over, and the fat is catching afire in the frying-pan, that very time the baby’s going to take to open its throat and squall you deaf. Let it squall! You ain’t got twenty pair o’ hands—you can’t tend to everything at once. You’ll find it so, too—mark my words—I never knew it to fail!”
“That is a very discouraging picture, indeed,” said Rosalie; “nevertheless, I should try to foresee and prevent such a combination of perplexities.”
“Oh! would you? You may thank goodness if, on top of all that, your man aint down with a spell of sickness, and the cow lost in the woods, and the well dry!” said the hostess, going to the door, and rapping, and calling out—
“John! You John!”