“My dear, don’t say mine; I don’t wear any. Nonsense, Sukey, take the woman and risk the child. Or stay—I see light at last. Take her on trial with the child, and then, if it should prove a nuisance, get rid of it, or of both.”
“That’s just what I can do. Thank you, Judge, you were always a wise counsellor,” said Mrs. Lyon, turning to leave the room.
“Don’t know. But hark ye, Sukey, my dear. No cutting down of the poor woman’s salary on account of her ‘encumbrance.’ That is a reason for raising it, not for reducing it,” called the judge after his retreating wife.
“Oh, I never intended to give her less than full pay,” replied Mrs. Lyon, as she went to her room to answer her letter.
The result was the engagement of Mrs. Sterling, with her “encumbrance.”
The widow and her child arrived one cold day in December, soon after the family were settled in their town house for the winter. She was the least in the world like the “poor widow” of poetry and fiction.
She was a little, wiry, muscular looking body, with no encumbrance of flesh, whatever she might have of family, for she was rather thin in form and face. She had a high color, black hair and black eyes. She was cheerful, active and enterprising. She wore no widow’s weeds, because, she explained, it had been three years since she had lost her husband, and black was a bore, always catching dirt and showing all it caught, and making everybody gloomy. She wore serviceable browns and grays, or dark crimsons.
She entered upon her duties with great energy, and soon had the house in perfect order, and the domestic machinery moving like magic. It is needless to say that she gave great satisfaction to her employers.
“I do not know how I ever got along without her. I know I could not now,” said Mrs. Lyon, adding, “I would rather have her, even with two children instead of one, than any body else without any. And indeed the child is not a nuisance, after all.”
No, the child was not a nuisance. And neither did she bear the slightest resemblance to her mother. She was a delicate little creature, with a pure, pale face; large, soft, gray eyes, and bright, silky, brown hair. She was very quiet, thoughtful and industrious for such a mere infant. Her mother ruled her with the same rigid discipline with which she governed all the servants of the household committed to her charge.