After a few weeks, during which time Ella had gained a little strength and was able to see her friends, Eugenia came regularly to Rose Hill, sitting all day by the bedside of the invalid, to whom she sometimes brought a glass of water, or some such trivial thing. Occasionally, too, she would look to see if the baby were asleep, pronouncing it "a perfect little cherub, just like its mother;" and there her services ended, for it never occurred to her that she could make the room much more cheerful by picking up and putting away the numerous articles which lay scattered around, and which were a great annoyance to the more orderly Mr. Hastings. Once, when Ella, as usual, was expatiating upon her goodness, asking her husband if she were not the best girl in the world, and saying "they must make her some handsome present in return for all she had done," he replied, "I confess, I should think more of Miss Deane, if she did you any real good, or rendered you any actual service; but, as far as I can discover, she merely sits here talking to you until you are wearied out."
"Why, what would you have her do?" asked Ella, her large blue eyes growing larger and bluer.
"I hardly know myself," answered Mr. Hastings; "but it seems to me that a genuine woman could not sit day after day in such a disorderly room as this."
"Oh, Howard!" exclaimed Ella, "you surely cannot expect Eugenia Deane to do a servant's duty. Why, she has been as delicately brought up as I, and knows quite as little of work."
"More shame for her if this is true," answered Mr. Hastings somewhat bitterly, and Ella continued.
"You've got such queer ideas, Howard, of woman's duties. I should suppose you would have learned, ere this, that few ladies are like your mother, who, though a blessed good soul, has the oddest notions."
"But they make a man's home mighty comfortable, those odd notions of mother's," said Mr. Hastings; then, knowing how useless it would be to argue the point, he was about changing the subject, when the new nurse, who had been there but a few days (the first one having quarreled with Mrs. Leah, and gone home), came in and announced her intention of leaving also, saying, "she would not live in the same house with old mother Leah!"
It was in vain that Mr. Hastings tried to soothe the angry girl—she was determined, and for a second time was Ella left alone.
"Oh, what will become of me?" she groaned, as the door closed upon her late nurse. "Do, pray, Howard, go to the kitchen and get me some—some—I don't know what, but get me something!"
With a very vague idea as to what he was to get or to do, Mr. Hastings left the room just as it was entered by Eugenia, to whom Ella detailed her grievances. "Her head ached dreadfully, Howard was cross, and her nurse gone. Oh, Eugenia!" she cried, "what shall I do? I wish I could die. Don't ever get married. What shall I do?"