“The only person in this house,” I said to myself, “who has a grain of sense is poor old Hannah.”
Just as the thought floated through my brain the door was opened and Hannah came in.
“I had a few minutes to spare, and I thought I’d just steal in and have a talk with you now. She’s downstairs talking to a visitor—drat her! say I. Now then, Miss Dumps, what is it? You tell me, and as quick as you can.”
Hannah was the cook of the establishment, and I must say an excellent cook she made.
“Why, Hannah,” I said, “I can’t imagine how you manage to leave the kitchen just now.”
“Oh, I can manage,” said Hannah. “I get as much help as I want.”
“And you are such a good cook, Hannah; you take to the new life as kindly as I do.”
“Much chance I have of not taking to it. It’s do your work or go; that’s the rule of rules in this house. If you are kept to cook, cook you must; if you don’t cook, out you go, and some one else comes in who can cook. That’s the way. Now, Miss Rachel, you’ve got to be made into a fashionable young lady, magnificently dressed, and educated in one of the ’orrid French schools.”
Hannah threw a world of contempt into the adjective she bestowed upon the Parisian school.
“In one of them ’orrid French schools,” she said; “and if you don’t submit, why, out you goes too.”