"Could not you go for a few weeks?" asked Mrs. Harding, anxiously. "Six or eight weeks would do me a great deal of good. You shall be well paid, if you will go. You may set your own price."
"No, I couldn't possibly go," said the girl, with a tantalizing smile. "I ain't obliged to work out, and I can't go."
Mrs. Harding looked and felt disappointed, but she made her way out, not knowing where to go. She felt that she was on a hopeless errand, and was half disposed to turn her face homeward. But, on second thought, she concluded to try a little longer, and they rode on, making fruitless inquiries here and there. At length she recollected that some one had told her that there were plenty of girls in Mapleton. In an instant, old Dobbin was headed that way, despite Walter's sinking spirits, and they rode along drinking in the perfume of a thousand flowers, and charmed into something like hope by the harmonies which float upon the breezes of early summer.
"I will inquire here," said Mrs. Harding, as they neared an old-fashioned house some two or three miles beyond the Plains; and, suiting the action to the word, she sprang lightly from the carriage and ran up to the door and knocked. After knocking till her fingers were sore, for neither bell nor knocker graced the panel, she heard steps of some one who came stubbing leisurely along to the door. The face which presented itself was coarse and greasy, and the untidy dress of the owner strongly suggestive of yellow snuff.
"Do you know of any girls for housework?" said Mrs. Harding, hardly expecting any available information.
"Don't b'l'eve there's such a thing to be found in ten mile. Folks can't git gals when they're sick, and dun no where well folks can find 'em. S'pect they'll have to do their own work; at any rate, they orto."
"But well people sometimes have more work than they can do, and then they need help," returned Mrs. Harding, in a tone of remonstrance.
"Wal, gals round here won't go where they're looked down on. They'd rather do sunthin' else than work for folks that's too grand to eat with them," said the woman, with a look which indicated that she thought the stranger one of the aristocracy.
"Then you cannot tell me of any one?" interrupted Mrs. Harding, intending to cut short the uncivil harangue.
"No; not unless Betty Symonds would go; but, then, she wouldn't, I know," replied the woman, who seemed a little softened, now that she had given vent to her spleen against the "grand folks."