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Our Second Girl
by
“What is she doing there?”
“Reading, sewing, and writing, as far as I can see. There are a few books, and a portfolio, and a small inkstand there,–and a neat little work-basket. She is very nice with her needle, and obliging in putting her talents to the service of the other girls; but towards me she is the most perfectly silent and reserved being that one can conceive. I can’t make conversation with her; she keeps me off by a most rigid respectfulness of demeanor which seems to say that she wants nothing from me but my orders. I feel that I could no more ask her a question about her private affairs, than I could ask one of Mrs. McGregor in the next street. But then it is a comfort to have some one so entirely trustworthy as she is in charge of all the nice little articles which require attention and delicate handling. She is the only girl I ever had whom I could trust to arrange a parlor and a table without any looking after. Her eye and hand, and her ideas, are certainly those of a lady, whatever her position may have been.”
In time our Mary became quite a family institution for us, seeming to fill a thousand little places in the domestic arrangement where a hand or an eye was needed. She was deft at mending glass and china, and equally so at mending all sorts of household things. She darned the napkins and tablecloths in a way that excited my mother’s admiration, and was always so obliging and ready to offer her services that, in time, a resort to Mary’s work-basket and ever ready needle became the most natural thing in the world to all of us. She seemed to have no acquaintance in the city, never went out visiting, received no letters,–in short, seemed to live a completely isolated life, and to dwell in her own thoughts in her own solitary little room.
By that talent for systematic arrangement which she possessed, she secured for herself a good many hours to spend there. My mother, seeing her taste for reading, offered her the use of our books; and one volume after another spent its quiet week or fortnight in her room, and returned to our shelves in due time. They were mostly works of solid information,–history, travels,–and a geography and atlas which had formed part of the school outfit of one of the younger children she seemed interested to retain for some time. “It is my opinion,” said my mother, “that she is studying,–perhaps with a view to getting some better situation.”
“Pray keep her with us,” said I, “if you can. Why don’t you raise her wages? You know that she does more than any other girl ever did before in her place, and is so trustworthy that she is invaluable to us. Persons of her class are worth higher wages than common uneducated servants.”
My mother accordingly did make a handsome addition to Mary’s wages, and by the time she had been with us a year the confidence which her quiet manner had inspired was such that, if my mother wished to be gone for a day or two, the house, with all that was in it, was left trustingly in Mary’s hands, as with a sort of housekeeper. She was charged with all the last directions, as well as the keys to the jellies, cakes, and preserves, with discretionary power as to their use; and yet, for some reason, such was the ascendency she contrived to keep over her Hibernian friends in the kitchen, all this confidence evidently seemed to them quite as proper as to us.
“She ain’t quite like us,” said Biddy one day, mysteriously, as she looked after her. “She’s seen better days, or I’m mistaken; but she don’t take airs on her. She knows how to take the bad luck quiet like, and do the best she can.”