“Nor I, neither,” chimed in Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Twitchel,—­both anxious to show themselves clear on this leading point of New England house-keeping.

“There’s another thing I always tell Mary,” said Mrs. Katy, impressively. “’Never say there isn’t time for a thing that ought to be done.  If a thing is necessary, why, life is long enough to find a place for it.  That’s my doctrine.  When anybody tells me they can’t find time for this or that, I don’t think much of ’em.  I think they don’t know how to work,—­that’s all.’”

Here Mrs. Twitchel looked up from her knitting, with an apologetic giggle, at Mrs. Brown.

“Law, now, there’s Miss Brown, she don’t know nothin’ about it, ’cause she’s got her servants to every turn.  I s’pose she thinks it queer to hear us talkin’ about our work.  Miss Brown must have her time all to herself.  I was tellin’ the Deacon the other day that she was a privileged woman.”

“I’m sure, those that have servants find work enough following ’em ’round,” said Mrs. Brown,—­who, like all other human beings, resented the implication of not having as many trials in life as her neighbors.  “As to getting the work done up in the forenoon, that’s a thing I never can teach ’em; they’d rather not.  Chloe likes to keep her work ’round, and do it by snacks, any time, day or night, when the notion takes her.”

“And it was just for that reason I never would have one of those creatures ’round,” said Mrs. Katy.  “Mr. Scudder was principled against buying negroes,—­but if he had not been, I should not have wanted any of their work.  I know what’s to be done, and most help is no help to me.  I want people to stand out of my way and let me get done.  I’ve tried keeping a girl once or twice, and I never worked so hard in my life.  When Mary and I do all ourselves, we can calculate everything to a minute; and we get our time to sew and read and spin and visit, and live just as we want to.”

Here, again, Mrs. Brown looked uneasy.  To what use was it that she was rich and owned servants, when this Mordecai in her gate utterly despised her prosperity?  In her secret heart she thought Mrs. Katy must be envious, and rather comforted herself on this view of the subject,—­sweetly unconscious of any inconsistency in the feeling with her views of utter self-abnegation just announced.

Meanwhile the tea-table had been silently gathering on its snowy plateau the delicate china, the golden butter, the loaf of faultless cake, a plate of crullers or wonders, as a sort of sweet fried cake was commonly called,—­tea-rusks, light as a puff, and shining on top with a varnish of egg,—­jellies of apple and quince quivering in amber clearness,—­whitest and purest honey in the comb,—­in short, everything that could go to the getting-up of a most faultless tea.

“I don’t see,” said Mrs. Jones, resuming the gentle paeans of the occasion, “how Miss Scudder’s loaf-cake always comes out jest so.  It don’t rise neither to one side nor t’other, but jest even all ’round; and it a’n’t white one side and burnt the other, but jest a good brown all over; and it don’t have no heavy streak in it.”