In friendship’s smile and home’s caress:
Collecting all the heart’s sweet ties
Into one knot of happiness.”—Moore.
The next morning, after breakfast, while sitting alone in her cabin, engaged, as usual, in needlework, Rosalie received a call from her kind neighbour, Mrs. Attridge, whom she found to be the wife of the worthy proprietor of the neighbouring lead-smelting furnace. “Fat, fair, and forty,” with a fund of good nature and good humour, in easy circumstances, and with much experience in Western life, this lady proved an invaluable acquisition to Rosalie in the era of her cabin trials. Her frank, gay, and homely manner invited confidence. She pressed upon her young neighbour the freedom of her garden and her dairy, for as long as the latter chose to avail herself of the privilege, or until she should have cows and a garden of her own—telling her that it was the custom of the settlers to accommodate each other in that way, and that she herself, in the first year of her residence here, had been indebted to a neighbour for her milk and vegetables. Talking of vegetables, led to the subject of “Billy,” whom Mrs. Attridge laughingly averred to be a vegetable himself, for verdancy. Billy, she said, was a native of Holland, brought over to America in his infancy, and left a destitute orphan, whom her mother had taken and brought up, but whose peculiarity of disposition and simplicity of character was such as fitted him only for house-work. She said that, on the death of his first mistress, Billy had attached himself to the fortunes of herself and husband, and had accompanied them to the West, and had been their only house servant ever since—cooking, cleaning, washing, and ironing, as well as any woman could.
Rosalie was amused, cheered, and comforted, by Mrs. Attridge’s lively conversation and kind sympathy—yet during the lady’s visit, a case that had troubled the youthful wife for several days still weighed upon her spirits and cast its gloom over her countenance, and refused to be shaken off.
Mrs. Attridge, with a housekeeper’s sympathy and a woman’s tact, divined the cause, and with rude but kind promptitude drew the trouble out to light, by suddenly asking—
“What do you intend to do about your washing, my dear?—for it is all nonsense to suppose that you could wash.”
“It is, indeed,” said Rosalie; “and that is just what disturbs me so. I can manage to keep our cabin tidy, and dress our little meals; but I cannot wash—indeed, I cannot. I attempted to do so, but, after having exhausted all my strength, and made myself almost ill, I failed. And when I know that every pioneer housekeeper needs to be competent to the performance of all her domestic duties, I feel thoroughly ashamed of my helplessness in some respects. And when I see my husband so patient and cheerful under domestic annoyances that no day-labourer with an efficient helpmate ever has to suffer—oh! you know I must feel so cruelly disappointed in myself.”
Mrs. Attridge made no comment, but looked upon her young neighbour with a considerate, fond, protective expression on her honest countenance. And after a few minutes, Rosalie spoke again—
“Can you advise me what to do, Mrs. Attridge? for I have resolved that, in our present circumstances, my husband shall be put to no expense for these matters.”