She was like many of her race, a jolly-hearted, pig-headed, giggling, faithful old creature, who said "Yes'm" to Miss Dorcas and took her own way about most matters; and Miss Dorcas, satisfied that her way was not on the whole a bad one in the ultimate results, winked at her free handling of orders, and consented to accept her, as we do Nature, for what could be got out of her.
"They are going to have mince-pie and broiled chicken for dinner over there," said Mrs. Betsey, when the two ladies were seated at their own dinner-table that day.
"How in the world did you know that?" asked Miss Dorcas.
"Well! Dinah met their girl in at the provision store and struck up an acquaintance, and went in to help her put up a bedstead, and so she stopped a while in the kitchen. The tall gentleman with black hair is the husband—I thought all the while he was," said Mrs. Betsey. "The other one is a Mr. Fellows, a great friend of theirs, Mary says——"
"Mary!—who is Mary?" said Miss Dorcas.
"Why, Mary McArthur, their girl—they only keep one, but she has a little daughter about eight years old to help. I wish we had a little girl, or something that one might train for a waiter to answer door-bells and do little things."
"Our door-bells don't call for much attention, and a little girl is nothing but a plague," interposed Miss Dorcas.
"Dinah has quite fallen in love with Mrs. Henderson," said Mrs. Betsey; "she says that she is the handsomest, pleasantest-spoken lady she's seen for a great while."
"We'll call upon her when they get well settled," said Miss Dorcas, definitively.
Miss Dorcas settled this with the air of a princess. She felt that such a meritorious little person as the one over the way ought to be encouraged by people of good old families.