"You'll learn," said Norton. "I wonder if mamma will send you to school, Pink? We must get home to-morrow! We have staid a terrible long time at the parsonage."
CHAPTER III.
When Matilda came down stairs the next morning to get breakfast, she found Miss Redwood in the kitchen. The fire was going, the kitchen was warm; Miss Redwood was preparing some potatoes for baking.
"Good morning!" said she. "Here I am again. It does seem funny to be washing the potatoes to put in the stove, just as if folks hadn't been sick and dying, you may say, and getting well, and all that, since I touched 'em last. Well! life's a queer thing; and it don't go by the rule of three, not by no means."
"What rule does it go by?" said Matilda, leaning on the table and looking up at the housekeeper.
"La! I don't know," said Miss Redwood. "I know what I've been workin' by all these weeks, pretty much; I kept at my multiplication table; but I couldn't get no further most days than the very beginning—'Once one is one.' I tried hard to make it out two; but 'twas beyond me. I've learned that much, anyhow."
"Didn't Mrs. Laval help?"
"She helped all she could, poor critter, till she was 'most beat out. I declare I was sorry for her, next to the sick ones. She did all she could. She turned in to cook; and she didn't know no more about it than I know about talkin' any language beside my own. Not so much; for I kin tell French when I hear it; but she didn't know boiling water."
"What can I do to help you, Miss Redwood?" Matilda asked, suddenly remembering the present.