The poor mistress bore all this with patience for some time. She would have gone on bearing the roughness and the noise, however disagreeable, as long as Randall liked; but her soft heart could not bear those glum, cross looks, and this alarming silence.
"I was thinking of Miss Catherine's marriage, Randall. That was what made me forget the hour. What shall I do without her?"
"Yes, that's just like it," said the insolent abigail; "nothing ever can content some people. Most ladies would be glad to settle their daughters so well; but some folk make a crying matter of every thing. It would be well for poor servants, when they're sitting over the fire, their bones aching to death for very weariness, if they'd something pleasant to think about. They wouldn't be crying for nothing, and keeping all the world out of their beds, like those who care for naught but how to please themselves."
Part of this was said, part muttered, part thought; and the poor timid mistress—one of whose domestic occupations it seemed to be to study the humors of her servants—heard a part and divined the rest.
"Well, Randall, I don't quite hear all you are saying; and perhaps it is as well I do not; but I wish you would give me my things and make haste, for I'm really very tired, and I want to go to bed."
"People can't make more haste than they can."
And so it went on. The maid-servant never relaxing an atom of her offended dignity—continuing to look as ill-humored, and to do every thing as disagreeably as she possibly could—and her poor victim, by speaking from time to time in an anxious, most gentle, and almost flattering manner, hoping to mollify her dependent; but all in vain.
"I'll teach her to keep me up again for nothing at all," thought Randall.
And so the poor lady, very miserable in the midst of all her luxuries, at last gained her bed, and lay there not able to sleep for very discomfort. And the abigail retired to her own warm apartment, where she was greeted with a pleasant fire, by which stood a little nice chocolate simmering, to refresh her before she went to bed—not much less miserable than her mistress, for she was dreadfully out of humor—and thought no hardship upon earth could equal that she endured—forced to sit up in consequence of another's whim when she wanted so sadly to go to bed.