“Yes. Course some make three times that and more; but they’re the experienced ones, the good ones. And there’s heaps that don’t. What makes you so sot on earnin’ a livin’, Caroline? Ain’t you satisfied with the kind I’m tryin’ to give you?”
She regarded him reproachfully. “Please don’t say that,” she protested. “You always treat your kindness as a joke, but to me it—it—”
“There! there!” quickly. “Don’t let’s talk foolish. I see what you mean, dearie. It ain’t the livin’ but because I’m givin’ it to you that troubles you. I know. Well, I ain’t complainin’ but I understand your feelin’s and respect ’em. However, I shouldn’t study type-writin’, if I was you. There’s too much competition in it to be comfortable, as the fat man said about runnin’ races. I’ve got a suggestion, if you want to listen to it.”
“I do, indeed. What is it?”
“Why, just this. I’ve been about everythin’ aboard ship, but I’ve never been a steward. Now I’ll say this much for Annie, she tried hard. She tumbled into general housekeepin’ the way Asa Foster said he fell into the cucumber frame—with a jolt and a jingle; and she’s doin’ her best accordin’ to her lights. But sometimes her lights need ile or trimmin’ or somethin’. I’ve had the feelin’ that we need a good housekeeper here. If Annie’s intelligence was as broad and liberal as her shoes, we wouldn’t; as ’tis, we do. I’ll hire you, Caroline, for that job, if you say so.”
“I? Uncle Elisha, you’re joking!”
“No, I ain’t. Course I realize you ain’t had much experience in runnin’ a house, and I hope you understand I don’t want to hire you as a cook. But I’ve had a scheme in the back of my head for a fortni’t or more. Somethin’ Sylvester said about a young lady cousin of his made me think of it. Seems over here at the female college—you know where I mean—they’re teachin’ a new course that they’ve christened Domestic Science. Nigh’s I can find out it is about what our great gran’marms larned at home; that, with up-to-date trimmin’s. All about runnin’ a house, it is; how to superintend servants, and what kind of things to have to eat, and how they ought to be cooked, and takin’ care of children—Humph! we don’t need that, do we?—and, well, everything that a home woman, rich or poor, ought to know. At least, she ought to ’cordin’ to my old-fashioned notions. Sylvester’s cousin goes there, and likes it; and I judge she ain’t figgerin’ to be anybody’s hired help, either. My idea was about this: If you’d like to take this course, Caroline, you could do it afternoons. Mornin’s and the days you had off, you could apply your science here at home, on Annie. Truly it would save me hirin’ somebody else, and—well, maybe you’d enjoy it, you can’t tell.”
His niece seemed interested.
“I know of the Domestic Science course,” she said. “Several of my friends—my former friends, were studying it. But I’m afraid, Uncle, that I don’t see where earning my living has any part in it. It seems to me that it means your spending more money for me, paying my tuition.”
“No more’n I’d spend for a competent housekeeper. Honest, Caroline, I’d like to do it. You think it over a spell.”