[MRS. PRIMKINS' SURPRISE.]
By Olive Thorne.
Our older readers will remember Nimpo, whose "Troubles" interested them in St. Nicholas's first year. To our newer friends it is only necessary to say, that Nimpo and Rush were boarding with Mrs. Primkins during their mother's absence, by Nimpo's own desire, and were very unhappy under the care of that well-meaning—but very peculiar—person, who was so greatly surprised on the occasion of the Birthday Party.
One morning, Mrs. Primkins received a letter. This was a very unusual occurrence, and she hastened to wipe her hands out of the dish-water, hunt up her "specs," clean them carefully, and, at last, sit down in her chintz-covered "Boston rocker," to enjoy at her leisure this very rare literary dissipation.
Nimpo, who was boarding with Mrs. Primkins while her mother was off on a journey, was engaged in finishing her breakfast, and did not notice anything. Having found her scissors, and deliberately cut around the old-fashioned seal, Mrs. Primkins opened the sheet and glanced at the name at the bottom of the page, then turned her eyes hastily toward Nimpo, with a low, significant "Humph!"
But Nimpo, intent only on getting off to school, still did not see her. Mrs. Primkins went on to examine more closely, covering with her hands something which fell from the first fold, rustling, to her lap. Very deliberately, then, as became this staid woman, did she read the letter from date to signature, twice over, and, ending as she had begun with a significant "Humph!" she refolded the letter, slipped in the inclosure, put it into her black silk work-bag which hung on the back of her chair, and resumed her dish-washing, for she was a genuine "Yankee housekeeper" of the old-fashioned sort, and scorned the assistance of what she called "hired help."
Meanwhile, Nimpo finished her breakfast, gathered up her books, and hurried off to school, though it was an hour too early, never dreaming that the letter had anything to do with her. After the morning work was done,—the pans scalded and set in the sun; the house dusted from attic to cellar; the vinegar reheated and poured over the walnuts that were pickling; the apples drying on the shed roof, turned over; the piece of muslin ("bolt," she called it) that was bleaching on the grass, thoroughly sprinkled; and, in fact, everything, indoors and out, in Mrs. Primkins' domain, put into perfect order, that lady sat down to consider. She drew the letter from the bag, and read it over, carefully inspecting a ten-dollar bill in her hands, and then leaned back, and indulged herself in a very unusual, indeed totally unheard-of, luxury—a rest of ten minutes with idle hands!