She is about to make her initial venture in shirtwaists, and she approaches them with as much caution as if she were experimenting with tights and trunks.  The poor little seamstress who is officiating has, to my certain knowledge, tried one waist on five times, because, as Miss Lavinia does not “feel it,” she thinks it cannot fit properly.

Never mind, she will get over all that, of course.  The plan that she has formed of spending five or six months in the real country must appear somewhat in the light of a revolution to her, and the preparation of a special uniform and munitions for the campaign a necessary precaution.  Her present plan is to come to me for May, then, if the life suits her, she will either take a small house that one of our farmer neighbours often rents for the summer months, or else, together with her maid, Lucy, board at one of the hill farms.

I have told her plainly (for what is friendship worth if one may not be frank) that if after trial we agree with each other, I hope she will stay with us all the season; but as for her maid, I myself will supply her place, if need be, and Effie do her mending, for I could not have Lucy come.

Perhaps it may be very narrow and provincial, but to harbour other people’s servants seems to me like inviting contagion and subjecting one’s kitchen to all the evils of boarding house atmosphere.

I used to think last summer, when I saw the arrival of various men and maids belonging to guests of the Bluff Colony, that I should feel much more at ease in the presence of royalty, and that I could probably entertain Queen Alexandra at dinner with less shock to her nerves and traditions than one of these ladies’ maids or gentlemen’s gentlemen.

Martha Corkle expresses her opinion freely upon this subject, and I must confess to being a willing listener, for she does not gossip, she portrays, and often with a masterly touch.  The woes of her countrywoman, the Ponsonby’s housekeeper, often stir her to the quick.  The Ponsonby household is perhaps one of the most “difficult” on the Bluffs, because its members are of widely divergent ages.  The three Ponsonby girls range from six to twenty-two, with a college freshman son second from the beginning, while Josephine, sister of the head of the family, though quite Miss Lavinia’s age, is the gayest of the gay, and almost outdoes her good-naturedly giddy sister-in-law.

“It’s just hawful, Mrs. Evan,” Martha said one day, when, judging by the contents of the station ’bus and baggage wagon, almost the entire Ponsonby house staff must have left at a swoop; “my eyes fairly bleeds for poor Mrs. Maggs” (the housekeeper), “that they do.  ’Twas bad enough in the old country, where we knew our places, even though some was ambitioned to get out of them; but here it’s like blind man’s buff, and enough to turn a body giddy.  Mrs. Maggs hasn’t a sittin’ room of her own where she and the butler and the nurse can have their tea in peace or entertain guests, but she sets two tables in the servants’ hall, and a pretty time she has of it.