MRS. LANE dropped down on the door-step and fanned herself with her apron. “It does beat all,” she said, aloud to herself, “how trifling these heathens are. Here I am paying seven dollars a week to this miserable Chinaman to do nothing but the cooking, and now if he doesn’t slip off without a word and leave me to do all the work.”
“Don’t bother about it, mamma,” answered Mary Lane, with an abstracted air, “pingo, irregular, we can eat, pingere, anything. It’s too hot to worry, pinxi, pinctum.”
Mary meant to be kind, but as she hunched her shoulders over her book again, her mother’s trials were entirely out of her mind. But for once in her life the overworked woman’s patience forsook her. “I’ve got to bother,” she said, wearily, “what with a houseful of city boarders, and this being quarterly conference and the ministers coming here to dinner, and that heathen away. I can’t let it go, I’ve got to bother.” Then she arose and walked away quickly so her plaints should not disturb her daughter’s studying.
A few moments later a gentle knock was heard at the door, and—“Mamma says she would like to have screens put into her windows, Mrs. Lane,” said a crisp-looking young girl who put her head into the door, “and the water won’t run upstairs, and we need more—why, what in the world is the matter?” she finished abruptly, for poor Mrs. Lane had put down her pitcher, looking as if this was the last straw.
“Everything is the matter,” the tired woman answered, and motioned the girl into the hall to explain that all her troubles seemed to have culminated that morning and that the ministers were to be there for dinner.
“Can’t you get any one to help you?” the girl asked, looking inquiringly through the door at Mary.
“No, she’s too busy studying; I wouldn’t have her stop preparing for her Latin examination for anything; she is going to have a higher education, you know,” she added, with a touch of pride.
The youthful summer boarder looked down at the tired little woman with a bright smile. “Oh, Mrs. Lane, I’m coming right in to help you, myself,” she said; “I just love to do things in the kitchen, honestly I do,” commencing to take off her rings and rolling up her sleeves, as she saw Mrs. Lane had not fully grasped what she had said.
“No, you must not stay in this hot place,” the woman said, noticing the stiff collar and freshly starched duck skirt; “and, besides,” she continued, to herself, as she remembered how some of her boarders, last summer, had tried to have a candy-pull and had set the house on fire, “I can’t be bothered now showing her. I know how these city girls work.”