"This work-day world, this work-day world,
How it doth plod along!"
Tap, tap, tap, on the back kitchen door of Esq. Pimble's great brick
mansion, and a clattering of plates and tea things within which quite
drowned the timid knock. A second and louder one brought a fat, red-faced
woman with rolled-up sleeves and a dish-towel in hand, to answer the
summons.
"Sakes, Dilly Danforth!" exclaimed she, on beholding the well-known,
faded blanket of the washerwoman; "what brings you here so airly in the
mornin'? If you are after cold victuals, I can tell you you can't have
any, for mistress--"
"I am not come seeking charity," said Dilly, cutting short the woman's
brawling speech; "Mr. Pimble wished me to come and wash for him to day."
"_He_ did?" said the bold-visaged housekeeper, opening her large,
buttermilk-colored eyes with astonishment; "well, for sure!"--and here
she seemed debating some matter in her mind for several moments, her hand
still holding the door in forbidding proximity to poor Mrs. Danforth's
pale, grief-worn face.
"Well, you can come in then, I s'pose," she said, at length, flinging it
open spitefully, and returning to the wiping of her breakfast dishes,
which she sent together with such a crash, that poor Dilly, as she stood
over the stove trying to warm her chilly fingers by a decaying fire,
momentarily expected to see them scattered over the floor in a thousand
fragments.
"Sakes! are you cold this warm spring morning?" snarled the plump,
well-fed housekeeper, as she thumped back and forth, carrying her piles
of plates to the cupboard. "Why don't you shut the outside door after
you, then? For my part, I'm most roasted to death."
"You have been in a warm room, while I have not seen a fire this
morning," said Dilly, meekly, as she closed the door and returned to her
place by the stove.
"Well, I wish I hadn't," answered the ireful Mrs. Peggy Nonce;--"a hard
fate is mine; sweltering over a great fire all my life, to cook for a
family that don't know nothing only to make the work as hard as they can.
Now, here's Mr. Pimble goes and gets you here to wash; never tells me a
word about it till you come right in upon me just as I have got my
breakfast things cleared away, settin'-room swept out, and fire all down
in the kitchen. I s'pose you have had nothing to eat to-day, for you
always come half starved, though why you do so I don't know, save to make
me work and get all you can out of us. When Mr. Pimble rents you that
great house so cheap, too! I declare, I should think, with all that man's
trials, he would get to be a hypocrite and believe in total
annihilation."
Dilly made no reply to this speech. Probably the latter part was beyond
her simple comprehension.
Mr. Pimble himself, the man of trials, as his housekeeper affirmed, now
opened the sitting-room door and looked forth. He was habited in a long,
faded, palm-figured bed-gown, all muffled up round his chin, and
sheep-skin slippers without heels. He had a lank, pale, discouraged
visage, and thin, light hair, streaked with gray, in a very untidy state
straggling about his face. He pulled his wrapper up yet closer about his
head, when he discovered the washerwoman, and shambled across the
clean-swept floor, his heelless slippers going clip-clap after him, as he
stalked along. What a gaunt, unhealthy-looking personage was the rich
Peter Paul Pimble, Esq., of Mudget Square!
"Well, you are come, then, are you?" said he, glancing toward the kitchen
clock, which was on the stroke of eight; "pretty time to commence a day's
work."
"And she has had no breakfast; and the water is not in the kettles," put
in dame Peggy. "I could have had that all hot for her, if you had just
told me she was comin' to wash. But some folks always like to be so sly
and underhanded."
"Stop your clack!" said the master, turning toward her with an angry
glance, "and get a bite of something to eat while she is putting her
water on and building a fire. I shall be at home through the day to
superintend matters and see that all is done to my wishes."
Thus saying, he scuffled back to his warm fire in the parlor; for, though
it was a bright morning in the early part of May, and odorous flowers
opening their petals to the genial sunbeams, and groups of singing birds
merry on all the foliage-covered trees, still Esq. Pimble was
cold--always cold, summer and winter. No genial influence could warm his
sluggish blood, or impart a glow to his dry, parchment-colored face.
There he sat; his feet poised on the fender, and a newspaper in his
skinny clutch, from which he seemed to read. Now and then he yawned,
stretched himself, approached the window, gazed forth for a moment with
some anxiety depicted on his expressionless face, and then sunk down in
his cushioned chair again. All the while the washing was going on briskly
in the kitchen. Peggy Nonce had outlived her morning's asperity, and
concluded to bake a batch of dried apple pies, as there must be a fire
kept in the stove for Billy, and it would save burning the wood another
day for the express purpose of cooking operations. So it appeared dame
Peggy, with all her tempers, had one good point at least, and one but
seldom found in servants,--a lookout for her employer's interests. The
bluffy housekeeper was given to gossip, too, as all of her class are; and
who could give her a better synopsis of the private affairs of half the
families in Wimbledon, than Dilly Danforth, the washerwoman, who
performed the drudgery and slop-work in many of the fine homes of the
upper class? But, after all, Peggy had more to give than receive; for by
some means the poor washerwoman did not seem possessed of the "gift of
gab." She was lamentably ignorant on many points where Peggy thought,
with her advantages, _she_ would have been well-informed and able to
answer any question proposed. And so the news-loving housekeeper, though
she remembered her master's interests in the article of firewood, was
fain to forget them in a matter of far more importance, and broached
forth into a long tale of his trials and domestic discomforts. Warming
with her discourse as she proceeded, her voice grew so shrill and
vehement, that Mr. Pimble, had he not been deeply engaged in poring over
the trials his loquacious housekeeper was so eloquently setting forth to
her silent and rather inattentive listener, he would have discovered
himself the hero of a tale which might have lost Mrs. Peggy Nonee a
place she had occupied half a lifetime. But Mr. Pimble sat in bed-gown
and slippers till dinner was announced at one P.M., and the three young
Pimbles tumbled into the hall in boisterous glee, just escaped from the
restraint of school discipline. They all rushed to the table at once,
and called for half a dozen kinds of food in a voice, which the glum,
abstracted father heaped indiscriminately on their plates. There was no
sound save the clatter of knives and forks for several minutes, while
the interesting family discussed their amply-provided and well-prepared
meal. At length Master Garrison Pimble, a lad of a dozen years, declared
sister Sukey had got the biggest piece of venison pie. Susan, a little
girl of seven summers, said she "didn't care if she had; she ought to
have."
"No, you oughtn't either," returned Master Garrison, "for you are not
half as big as I."
"I don't care for that," lisped Susan; "mammy says women ought to have
the best and most of everything, and do just what they like to, and go
just where they want to."
"Well, they shouldn't do any such thing, should they, father?" demanded
the argument-loving Garrison.
"Eat your dinners quietly, my children," returned the silent father, "and
not meddle with matters you do not understand."
"But I do understand them," continued the youth. "I know sister Sukey
ought not to have the largest piece of pie, and she shan't."
Thus saying, he made a dive at Miss Susan's plate, and bore off her
generous slice of venison pastry on his fork. Susey screamed at the top
of her voice, and, clutching her hands in her brother's hair, she pulled
it so vigorously he was fain to drop his prize, which fell to the carpet
and was devoured by a half-starved grimalkin, while he boxed his sister's
ears soundly for her vixen attack upon his bushy black hair.
"I'll learn you to pull my hair!" said he, with a very red face.
"I'll learn you to steal my pie!" shrieked she, as, maddened by her
smarting ears, she flew at him and dug long, bloody scratches in his
cheeks with her sharp little nails. The father now parted the combatants,
and shut the warlike Susey in the closet, where she was loud in
pronouncing maledictions against her brother, and heaping vituperations
upon her father; declaring, when mammy came home, she would tell her how
she was abused in her absence, and mammy would take sides with her,
because she knew men were all cross and ugly, and tried to hurt and wrong
poor feeble woman. Garrison and David finished their meal in silence; and
when the seminary bell rang to announce the hour for reöpening of school,
Mr. Pimble liberated Susey, and all went shouting off together.
Then he called in Dilly and the housekeeper, and, while they dined on the
fragments, went out in the kitchen to inspect the progress there. All
seemed to be moving on well, and, as he was returning to his seat by the
sitting-room fire, a covered buggy drove to the front piazza, and a
gentleman descended and assisted two ladies to alight. Directly the
parlor was dashed open, and the trio made their entry. Foremost was the
mistress of the mansion, Mrs. Judith Justitia Pimble. What a puny,
trembling thing appeared the husband, as he stood there like a galvanized
mummy in presence of that tall, portly woman, with her broad shoulders
and commanding aspect! Her first act was to smother the fire; her second,
to throw open the windows; her third, to ensconce herself in her liege
lord's easy-chair, and bid her guests lay aside their travelling garbs,
and make themselves at home. Finding his comfortable seat appropriated,
and no notice vouchsafed him, Mr. Pimble shuffled off into the kitchen.
"Was that your husband, sister Justitia?" inquired the lady visitor, as
she threw off her shawl and bonnet, with an energetic toss.
"Yes," answered the majestic lady in her most majestic tone, "that was
Pimble. You will not mind him at all; he is as near nothing as can be,--a
mere crank to keep the machine in motion,--you understand. He has his
sphere, however. The lowest brute animals have theirs. Pimble's is to
stay at home and superintend the minor matters of life, such as milking
the kine, feeding the chickens, and slaughtering a lamb occasionally to
subserve the grosser wants of poor human nature. In brief, all those
trivial and perplexing things in which a superior mind cannot be supposed
to feel an interest, and by which it is not right it should be fettered,
and prevented from soaring to its own lofty sphere of thought and
action."
Mrs. Pimble paused for breath as she delivered herself of the above
voluble speech, and the lady visitor replied:
"You speak heroicly, sister Justitia. I see you have obtained your
rightful position in your own household. O, would that all our crushed
and down-trodden sisters were possessed of but a tithe of your energy and
independence of character! Then would our young Reform, which encounters
on every side the swords and pickaxes of infuriate battalions of the
tyrant man, ride in triumphal chariot over our whole broad country's
proud domain!"
"Ah, sister Simcoe, how doth your inspired language fill my soul with
fire! I rejoice that you are come among us. How will your presence
encourage our ranks, and, in the triumph of your medical skill, vile male
usurpers of the healing art shall sink to rise no more! I long to read
again the proceedings of our late convention, the thrilling speeches, the
sweeping resolutions!"
"Let us thus occupy ourselves," said young Dr. Simcoe, turning toward a
remote corner of the apartment where sat the small man who had
accompanied the ladies, perched on a hard, uncushioned chair, his hands
folded in his lap, and his eyes bent studiously on the carpet. This was
the personage on whom the accomplished young medical practitioner had, a
few months previous, condescended to bestow the princely honor of her
hand.
"Sim," said the eloquent wife, as she glanced carelessly upon him, "where
are the portmanteaus?"
"In the entry," answered the small man, raising his eyes for a moment to
his fair consort's face.
"Bring them in and open them," said the lady, again sinking down in her
soft seat.
The small man disappeared in a twinkling, and the portmanteaus were soon
placed on the table, and their contents spread forth.
"I will now order some refreshment," said Mrs. Pimble;--"and while it is
preparing, we can amuse ourselves with the documents. What would you
prefer for your dinner, sister Simcoe?"
"Pea soup," returned the lady doctor; "that is my uniform dish,--simple
and plain."
"And Mr. Simcoe, what would he choose?"
"O, he has no choice!--anything that comes handiest will do for him."
Mrs. Pimble glanced toward Mr. Simcoe. Mr. Simcoe simpered and bowed. So
Mrs. Pimble swept into the kitchen to issue her commands. She started on
beholding Dilly Danforth bending over a wash-tub filled to the brim with
smoking linen, just out of a boiling suds. Darting one fiery glance
toward her forceless husband, sitting humped up over the stove, his head
supported on his hands, she exclaimed, "What does this mean?" Mr. Pimble
looked up vacantly; Peggy turned round from her occupation of washing the
dinner dishes, and Dilly kept to her wash-tub. No one seemed to
understand to whom the stately mistress addressed her brief
interrogatory. "Have you all lost your tongues?" at length exclaimed Mrs.
Pimble, in a louder tone; and, seizing her husband's chair, she gave it a
rough jerk, and demanded, "Are you dumb, Peter Pimble? What is that
beggar-woman,"--pointing toward Dilly,--"doing here?"
"Don't you see she is washing?" returned the husband, rather ironically.
"Well, by whose leave?"
"Mine."
"Yours?--and why have you brought a washerwoman into the house in my
absence, and without my permission?"
"Because all my linen was dirty."
"What if it was?"
"I wanted it washed."
"What for?"
"Because the spring courts are held in Olneyville next week."
"What if they are?"
"I would like to attend."
"You would, would you? No doubt, and confine me at home to superintend
the domestic affairs. No, Mr. Pimble, you don't enslave me in that
manner. I'm a free woman, and acknowledge no man master. I'll see if I'm
not mistress in my own house. Here, Dilly Danforth, take your hands out
of that wash-tub, and pack off home, instanter. There will be no more
washing done in my house to-day, or ever again, unless I order it done.
And you, Peggy Nonce, make a pea soup and broil a nice steak, with all
the appropriate dishes, and have a dinner prepared in half an hour, to
serve myself and guests."
There was an instant commotion in the kitchen, and the mistress swept
back to her guests in the parlor.