Mistress and Maid

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, 1st World Library (Editor), 1stworld Library (Editor)

Overview

She was a rather tall, awkward, and strongly-built girl of about fifteen. This was the first impression the "maid" gave to her "mistresses," the Misses Leaf, when she entered their kitchen, accompanied by her mother, a widow and washer-woman, by name Mrs. Hand. I must confess, when they saw the damsel, the ladies felt a certain twinge of doubt as to whether they had not been rash in offering to take her; whether it would not have been wiser to have gone on in their old way - now, alas! grown into a very old way, so as almost to make them forget they had ever had any other - and done without a servant still.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421817224
Publisher:	1st World Library
Publication date:	05/22/2006
Edition description:	REV
Pages:	372
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

Read an Excerpt

4G CHAPTER III. The week passed by, and Hilary received no ill tidings from home. Incessant occupation kept her from dwelling too much on anxious subjects: besides, she would not have thought it exactly right, while her time and her mental powers were, for so many hours per diem, legally Miss Balquid- der's, to waste the one, and weaken the other, by what is commonly called "fretting." Nor, carrying this conscientious duty to a higher degree, and towards a higher Master, would she have dared to sit grieving overmuch over their dark future. And yet it was very dark. She pondered over what was to be done with Ascott, or whether he was still to be left to the hopeless hope of doing something for himself: how long the little establishment at No. 15 could be kepttogether, or whether, after Selina's marriage, it would not be advisable to make some change that should contract expenses, and prevent this hard separation, from Monday to Saturday, between Johanna and herself. These, with equally anxious thoughts, attacked her in crowds, every day and every hour; but she had generally sufficient will to put them aside : at least till after work was done, when they could neither stupefy nor paralyse her. Trouble had to her been long enough familiar to have taught her its own best lesson that the mind can, in degree, rule itself, even as it rules the body. Thus, in her business duties, which were principally keeping accounts, in her management of the two young people under her, and of the small domestic establishment connected with the shop, Hilary went steadily on, day after day; made no blunders in her arithmetic, no mistakes in her housekeeping. Being new to all herresponsibilities, she had to give her whole mind to them; and she did it; and it was a blessingto her the sanctifie...