As she rolled up her sleeves she glanced about.
“It’s a monstrous house though,” she went on a minute later. “You’ll never be able to do all there’ll be to do now, unless you have help. Let alone the work, you never can manage to lift your aunt by yourself. I reckon you’ll have to send for Melviny Grey.”
“And who, pray, is she?”
“Melviny? Ain’t you never heard of Melviny?”
Jane regarded Lucy with astonishment.
“No.”
“Oh, well, that’s because you warn’t born and raised here,” she explained. “Why, Melviny’s one of the institutions of Sefton Falls. Nothin’ goes on in the way of tribulation without Melviny bein’ to it.”
“Oh, I see. She’s a nurse.”
“No, you couldn’t really call her that,” replied Jane thoughtfully. “An’ still I don’t know but you might as well tag her that way as any. ’Twould be hard to tell just what 207 Melviny is. She ain’t only a nurse, ’cause she’s a dressmaker; an’ she ain’t exactly a dressmaker, ’cause she makes bonnets; besides that she cleans house for folks, puts up pickles, and tends all the new babies. Melviny’s just a sort of present help in time of trouble.”
Lucy smiled.