"Well, I might have sent her forever, and all the result would have been the switch singing about my own shoulders, probably."
"That is because she knows you would never use it. As for me,—Hazel has a good memory."
Éloise gave a half-imperceptible shiver and frown; but, clearing her brow, said,—
"If Hazel had my accounts here, they would tame her. I will put all my malcontents through a course of mathematics. You do so well everywhere else, Mrs. Arles, that I've half the mind to ask you to advise me here. Little Arlesian, come over into Macedonia!"
"What is the matter?"
"Oh, it's only an inversion of the old problem, If the ton of coal cost ten dollars, what will the cord of wood come to? Now, if one bale"—
"But coal doesn't cost ten dollars," replied Mrs. Arles, with admirable simplicity.
"Now, if one bale of Sea-Island"—
"Oh, my dear, I know nothing at all about it. Pray, don't ask me."
"Well," said Éloise, after a moment's wondering pause, in which she had taken time to reflect that Mrs. Arles's corner of the estate was carried on faultlessly, "it is too bad to vex you with my matters, when you have as much as you can do in the house, yourself,"—and relapsed into what she called her Pythagorean errors.