In the most delicate way, Grace made Lillie acquainted with the domestic crisis; as, in old times, a prime minister might have carried to one of the Charleses the remonstrance and protest of the House of Commons.

“Oh!  I’m sure I don’t know how it’s to be done,” said Lillie, gayly.  “Mamma always got my things done somehow.  They always were done, and always must be:  you just tell her so.  I think it’s always best to be decided with servants.  Face ’em down in the beginning.”

“But you see, Lillie dear, it’s almost impossible to get servants at all in Springdale; and such servants as ours everybody says are an exception.  If we talk to Bridget in that way, she’ll just go off and leave us; and then what shall we do?”

“What in the world does John want to live in such a place for?” said Lillie, peevishly.  “There are plenty of servants to be got in New York; and that’s the only place fit to live in.  Well, it’s no affair of mine!  Tell John he married me, and must take care of me.  He must settle it some way:  I shan’t trouble my head about it.”

The idea of living in New York, and uprooting the old time-honored establishment in Springdale, struck Grace as a sort of sacrilege; yet she could not help feeling, with a kind of fear, that the young mistress had power to do it.

“Don’t, darling, talk so, for pity’s sake,” she said.  “I will go to John, and we will arrange it somehow.”

A long consultation with faithful John, in the evening, revealed to him the perplexing nature of the material processes necessary to get up his fair puff of thistledown in all that wonderful whiteness and fancifulness of costume which had so entranced him.

Lillie cried, and said she never had any trouble before about “getting her things done.”  She was sure mamma or Trixie or somebody did them, or got them done,—­she never knew how or when.  With many tears and sobs, she protested her ardent desire to realize the Scriptural idea of the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field, which were fed and clothed, “like Solomon in all his glory,” without ever giving a moment’s care to the matter.

John kissed and, embraced, and wiped away her tears, and declared she should have every thing just as she desired it, if it took the half of his kingdom.

After consoling his fair one, he burst into Grace’s room in the evening, just at the hour when they used to have their old brotherly and sisterly confidential talks.

“You see, Grace,—­poor Lillie, dear little thing,—­you don’t know how distressed she is; and, Grace, we must find somebody to do up all her fol-de-rols and fizgigs for her, you know.  You see, she’s been used to this kind of thing; can’t do without it.”

“Well, I’ll try to-morrow, John,” said Grace, patiently.  “There is Mrs. Atkins,—­she is a very nice woman.”

“Oh, exactly! just the thing,” said John.  “Yes, we’ll get her to take all Lillie’s things every week; That settles it.”