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The Young Housekeeper
by
Emily immediately called on her mother to communicate to her the melancholy information. Mrs. Anderson saw that these were what might be termed “minor trials,” for her daughter in prospective. She hoped that she would be discreet enough not to allow them to be magnified into what might appropriately be called major trials.
“Don’t you think, mother,” said Emily, “that you can manage to find, me a girl as good as Pedy?”
“I think it will be impossible. Pedy is a kind of rara avis in all that appertains to housekeeping. She excels in everything. You will be obliged now to limit your expectations. If you can obtain a girl who knows how to cook well, it is the best you can hope to do. Even that, I am afraid, will prove very difficult.”
“It appears to me that if girls who are obliged to work for a living understood what was for their good, they would be at more pains to inform themselves relative to what is expected of them.”
“A great difficulty lies in the want of competent teachers. Such things are not known by instinct; and experience, though a good, is a slow teacher.”
“If I have got to stay in the kitchen all the time to teach a girl, I may as well do the work myself.”
“I will do the best I can for you, but you must not expect me to find you a girl who will fill Pedy’s place, and do not, for your own sake–leaving George out of the question–be too afraid of the kitchen.”
Mrs. Anderson fulfilled the promise she made her daughter. She did her best, and felt tolerably well satisfied at being able to find a girl who had done the cooking in a large family in the country for more than a year.
Pedy Breck left Mrs. Brenton on Saturday after tea, and Deborah Leach took her place on Monday morning. Emily gave her a few general directions and as usual, seated herself in the parlour with her books, her music, and her embroidery, as resources against ennui. Deborah, also, was abundantly provided with the means to keep her out of idleness. She said to herself, after receiving the directions from Emily, that she “guessed there wouldn’t be time for much grass to grow under her feet that day.”
Deborah did not possess Pedy’s “sleight” at doing housework, and she felt a little discouraged when she found that, besides washing and preparing the dinner, she would be obliged to wash the dishes and do the chamber-work.
“I should think that she might take care of her own chamber,” she said to herself; “and I don’t think it would hurt her delicate hands a great deal, even if she should wash the dishes.”
In consideration of its being washing-day, George had sent home beefsteak for dinner, and Pedy, the same as she always did, had made some pies on Saturday, and placed them in the refrigerator for Sunday and Monday. Deborah had not been much accustomed to broiling steaks, as the family where she had been living considered it more economical, when butter brought such a high price, to fry them with slices of pork; but knowing the celebrity of her predecessor in everything pertaining to the culinary art, she exerted her skill to the utmost, and succeeded in doing them very well, and in tolerable season, so that George, after he came home, had to wait for dinner only ten minutes, which passed away very quickly, as time always did when he was with Emily.
Deborah’s first attempt at pastry was a decided failure. It was plain that she had never been initiated into the mysteries of making puff paste, nor did she, when telling over what she called her grievances to a friend, think it worth while, she said, “to pomper the appetite by making pies sweet as sugar itself, when there were thousands of poor souls in the world that would jump at a piece of pie a good deal sourer than what Mr. Brenton and his idle, delicate wife pretended wasn’t fit to eat. She was sure that she put two heapin’ spoonfuls of sugar into the gooseberry pie, and half as much into the apple pie, and Miss Brenton might make her fruit pies, as she called ’em, herself the next time, for ’twas a privilege she didn’t covet by no means.”