Our establishment on Beacon Street had been for some days in a
revolutionary state, owing to the fact that our second girl had gone
from us into the holy estate of matrimony. Alice was a pretty, tidy,
neat-handed creature, and, like many other blessings of life, so good
as to be little appreciated while with us. It was not till she had
left us that we began to learn that clean glass, bright silver,
spotless and untumbled table-linen, and, in short, all the appetizing
arrangements and appointments of our daily meals, were not always and
in all hands matters of course.
In a day or two, our silver began to have the appearance of old
pewter, and our glass looked as if nothing but muddy water could be
found. On coming down to our meals, we found the dishes in all sorts
of conversational attitudes on the table,--the meat placed diagonally,
the potatoes crosswise, and the other vegetables scattered here and
there,--while the table itself stood rakishly aslant, and wore the air
of a table slightly intoxicated.
Our beautiful china, moreover, began to have little chipped places in
the edges, most unusual and distressing to our eyes; the handles
vanished from our teacups, and here and there a small mouthful
appeared to be bitten out of the nose of some pretty fancy pitchers,
which had been the delight of my eyes.
Now, if there is anything which I specially affect, it is a refined
and pretty table arrangement, and at our house for years and years
such had prevailed. All of us had rather a weakness for china, and the
attractions of the fragile world, as presented in the great
crockery-stores, had been many times too much for our prudence and
purse. Consequently we had all sorts of little domestic idols of the
breakfast and dinner table,--Bohemian-glass drinking-mugs of antique
shape, lovely bits of biscuit choicely moulded in classic patterns,
beauties, oddities, and quaintnesses in the way of especial teacups
and saucers, devoted to different members of the family, wherein each
took a particular and individual delight. Our especial china or glass
pets of the table often started interesting conversations on the state
of the plastic arts as applied to every-day life, and the charm of
being encircled, even in the material act of feeding our mortal
bodies, with a sort of halo of art and beauty.
All this time none of us ever thought in how great degree our feeling
for elegance and refinement owed its gratification at the hour of
meals to the care, the tidiness, and neat handling of our now lost and
wedded Alice.
Nothing presents so forlorn an appearance as battered and neglected
finery of any kind; and elegant pitchers with their noses knocked off,
cut glass with cracked edges, and fragments of artistic teacups and
saucers on a tumbled tablecloth, have a peculiarly dismal appearance.
In fact, we had really occasion to wonder at the perfectly weird and
bewitched effect which one of our two Hibernian successors to the
pretty Alice succeeded in establishing in our table department. Every
caprice in the use and employment of dishes, short of serving cream in
the gravy-boats and using the sugar-bowl for pickled oysters and the
cream-pitcher for vinegar, seemed possible and permissible. My horror
was completed one morning on finding a china hen, artistically
represented as brooding on a nest, made to cover, not boiled eggs, but
a lot of greasy hash, over which she sat so that her head and tail
bewilderingly projected beyond the sides of the nest, instead of
keeping lengthwise within it, as a respectable hen in her senses might
be expected to do. There certainly is a great amount of native vigor
shown by these untrained Hibernians in always finding an unexpected
wrong way of doing the simplest thing. It quite enlarges one's ideas
of human possibilities.
In a paroxysm of vexation, I reviled matrimony and Murphy O'Connor,
who had stolen our household treasure, and further expressed my
griefs, as elder sons are apt to do, by earnest expostulations
with the maternal officer on the discouraging state of things;
declaring most earnestly, morning, noon, and night, that all was
going to ruin, that everything was being spoiled, that nothing was
even decent, and that, if things went on so much longer, I should
be obliged to go out and board,--by which style of remark I nearly
drove that long-suffering woman frantic.
"Do be reasonable, Tom," said she. "Can I make girls to order? Can I
do anything more than try such as apply, when they seem to give
promise of success? Delicacy of hand, neatness, nicety of eye, are not
things likely to be cultivated in the Irish boarding-houses from which
our candidates emerge. What chance have the most of them had to learn
anything except the most ordinary rough housework? A trained girl is
rare as a nugget of gold amid the sands of the washings; but let us
persevere in trying, and one will come at last."
"Well, I hope, at any rate, you have sent off that Bridget," I said,
in high disdain. "I verily believe, if that girl stays a week longer,
I shall have to leave the house."
"Compose yourself," said my mother; "Bridget's bundle is made up, and
she is going. I'm sorry for her too, poor thing; for she seemed
anxious to keep the place."
At this moment the doorbell rang. "I presume that's the new girl whom
they have sent round for me to see," said my mother.
I opened the door, and there in fact stood a girl dressed in a
neat-fitting dark calico, with a straw bonnet, simply tied with some
dark ribbon, and a veil which concealed her face.
"Is Mrs. Seymour at home?"
"She is."
"I was told that she wanted a girl."
"She does; will you walk in?"
I pique myself somewhat on the power of judging character, and there
was something about this applicant which inspired hope; so that,
before I introduced her into the room, I felt it necessary to
enlighten my mother with a little of my wisdom. I therefore whispered
in her ear, with the decisive tone of an eldest son, "I think, mother,
this one will do; you had better engage her at once."
"Have you lived out much?" said my mother, commencing the usual
inquiries.
"I have not, ma'am. I am but lately come to the city."
"Are you Irish?"
"No, ma'am; I am American."
"Have you been accustomed to the care of the table,--silver, glass,
and china?"
"I think, ma'am, I understand what is necessary for that."
All this while the speaker remained standing with her veil down; her
answers seemed to be the briefest possible; and yet, notwithstanding
the homely plainness of her dress, there was something about her that
impressed both my mother and me with an idea of cultivation and
refinement above her apparent station,--there was a composure and
quiet decision in her manner of speaking which produced the same
impression on us both.
"What wages do you expect?" said my mother.
"Whatever you have been accustomed to give to a girl in that place
will satisfy me," she said.
"There is only one thing I would like to ask," she added, with a
slight hesitation and embarrassment of manner; "would it be convenient
for me to have a room by myself?"