Deborah did not possess Pedy's "sleight" at doing housework, and she felt a little discouraged when she found that, besides washing and preparing the dinner, she would be obliged to wash the dishes and do the chamber-work.
"I should think that she might take care of her own chamber," she said to herself; "and I don't think it would hurt her delicate hands a great deal, even if she should wash the dishes."
In consideration of its being washing-day, George had sent home beefsteak for dinner, and Pedy, the same as she always did, had made some pies on Saturday, and placed them in the refrigerator for Sunday and Monday. Deborah had not been much accustomed to broiling steaks, as the family where she had been living considered it more economical, when butter brought such a high price, to fry them with slices of pork; but knowing the celebrity of her predecessor in everything pertaining to the culinary art, she exerted her skill to the utmost, and succeeded in doing them very well, and in tolerable season, so that George, after he came home, had to wait for dinner only ten minutes, which passed away very quickly, as time always did when he was with Emily.
Deborah's first attempt at pastry was a decided failure. It was plain that she had never been initiated into the mysteries of making puff paste, nor did she, when telling over what she called her grievances to a friend, think it worth while, she said, "to pomper the appetite by making pies sweet as sugar itself, when there were thousands of poor souls in the world that would jump at a piece of pie a good deal sourer than what Mr. Brenton and his idle, delicate wife pretended wasn't fit to eat. She was sure that she put two heapin' spoonfuls of sugar into the gooseberry pie, and half as much into the apple pie, and Miss Brenton might make her fruit pies, as she called 'em, herself the next time, for 'twas a privilege she didn't covet by no means."
But Mrs. Brenton did not covet the privilege more than she did, and after a great show of firmness on the subject, declaring to herself and her intimate friend that she never would give up, and that there was no use talkin' about it, she concluded she would try again, if Mrs. Brenton would stand right at her elbow and tell her the exact quantity of ingredences she must put into each pie.
"I s'pose you calc'late to do the ironing?" she said to Emily, on
Saturday morning.
"No, I am sure I don't," was Emily's reply. "I thought you had done it."
"Well, I havn't—I expected that you were agoing to do it. Miss Hodges, the woman I lived with before I came here, always did it, and she was the richest and genteelest woman in the place. She used to say there wasn't that girl on the face of the earth, that she would trust to starch and iron her fine linens and muslins, and laces."
Emily merely said that she was not in the habit of doing such things herself, and that she should expect her to do them.
Deborah went about her task very unwillingly. She told Emily that she knew she should sp'ile the whole lot, and she proved a true prophetess. The shirt-bosoms and collars bore indisputable evidence that she was not stinted for fuel, the hot flat-iron having left its full impress upon some, while "Charcoal Sketches," of a kind never dreamed of by Neal, were conspicuous on others. As for the muslins and laces, being of a frailer fabric, they gave way beneath the vigorous treatment to which they were subjected, and exhibited mere wrecks of their former selves. Not a single article was wearable which had passed through the severe ordeal of being starched and ironed by Deborah, and what was still more lamentable, many of them could not even, like an antique painting or statue, be restored.