When Jone saw the real farm-work going on, with a chance for everybody to turn in to help, his farmer blood boiled within him, as if he was a war-horse and sniffed the smoke of battle, and he got himself a rake and went to work like a good-fellow.  I never saw so many men at work in a hayfield at home, but when I looked at Jone raking I could see why it was it didn’t take so many men to get in our hay.  As for me, I raked a little, but looked about a great deal more.

Near the middle of the field was two women working together, raking as steadily as if they had been brought up to it.  One of these was young, and even handsomer than Miss Dick, which was the name of the bar lady.  To look at her made me think of what I had read of Queen Marie Antoinette and her court ladies playing the part of milkmaids.  Her straw hat was trimmed with delicate flowers, and her white muslin dress and pale blue ribbons made her the prettiest picture I ever saw out-of-doors.  I could not help asking Mrs. Locky who she was, and she told me that she was the chambermaid at the inn, and the other was the cook.  When I heard this I didn’t make any answer, but just walked off a little way and began raking and thinking.  I have often wondered why it is that English servants are so different from those we have, or, to put it in a strictly confidential way between you and me, madam, why the chambermaid at the “Bordley Arms,” as she is, is so different from me, as I used to be when I first lived with you.  Now that young chambermaid with the pretty hat is, as far as appearances go, as good a woman as I am, and if Jone was a bachelor and intended to marry her I would think it was as good a match as if he married me.  But the difference between us two is that when I got to be the kind of woman I am I wasn’t willing to be a servant, and if I had always been the kind of young woman that chambermaid is I never would have been a servant.

I’ve kept a sharp eye on the young women in domestic service over here, having a fellow-feeling for them, as you can well understand, madam, and since I have been in the country I’ve watched the poor folks and seen how they live, and it’s just as plain to me as can be that the young women who are maids and waitresses over here are the kind who would have tried to be shop-girls and dressmakers and even school-teachers in America, and many of the servants we have would be working in the fields if they lived over here.  The fact is, the English people don’t go to other countries to get their servants.  Their way is like a factory consuming its own smoke.  The surplus young women, and there must always be a lot of them, are used up in domestic service.

Now, if an American poor girl is good enough to be a first-class servant, she wants to be something else.  Sooner than go out to service she will work twice as hard in a shop, or even go into a factory.