“Dear little fellow,” said Sal, “he looks like Willie, only not half so handsome.”

“She isn’t a boy,” quickly interrupted Mary.  “Her name is Alice.”

“No consequence,” said Sally, “he’s Willie to me;” and ever after, in spite of Mary’s remonstrance, she persisted in speaking of Alice as “he,” and “the little boy.”

Mary soon found that the poor-house with Sal Furbush shut up, and the poor-house with Sal at liberty, were quite different affairs.  Now it was no longer lonely, for Sal’s fertile imagination was constantly suggesting something new, either by way of pastime or mischief.  Towards Miss Grundy, she and the other paupers evinced a strong dislike, owing, in a great measure, to the air of superiority which that lady thought proper to assume, and which was hardly more than natural considering the position which she occupied.  She was a capital housekeeper, and to one unacquainted with the circumstances it seemed strange, why a person, apparently so strong and healthy, should be in the Alms-House.  Unfortunately, however, she was subject to fits, which made her presence so unpleasant to the people with whom she lived that at last, no one was willing to hire her.  About that time, too, she was taken very ill, and as she had no relatives, she was removed to the poor-house, where she had remained ever since.

When Mrs. Parker became too feeble to work, Miss Grundy immediately stepped into her place, filling it so well, that as Sal had said, Mr. Parker bore a great deal from her, knowing that no one whom he could hire would do as well, or save as much as she did.  Sal Furbush she could neither manage nor make work, and she vented her spite towards her by getting her shut up on the slightest pretexts.  Sal knew very well to whom she was indebted for her “temporary seclusions,” as she called them, and she exerted herself to repay the debt with interest.  Sometimes on a sultry summer morning, when the perspiration stood thickly on Miss Grundy’s face as she bent over a red-hot cook-stove in the kitchen, Sal with her, feet in the brook, which ran through the back yard, and a big palm-leaf fan in her hand, would call out from some shady spot, “Hallo, Miss Grundy, don’t you wish you were a lady boarder, and could be as cool and as comfortable as I am?” Occasionally, too, when safely fastened in the pantry enjoying her green tea and Boston crackers, she would be startled with the words, “That must have an excellent relish!” and looking up, she would spy Sal, cosily seated on the top shelf, eyeing her movements complacently, and offering, perhaps, to assist her if she found the tea too strong!

Miss Grundy wore a wig, and as she seemed disturbed whenever the fact was mentioned, the walls of the house both inside and out were frequently ornamented with ludicrous pictures of herself, in which she was sometimes represented as entirely bald-headed, while with spectacles on the end of her nose, she appeared to be peering hither and thither in quest of her wig.  On these occasions Miss Grundy’s wrath knew no bounds, and going to Mr. Parker she would lay the case before him in so aggravated a form, that at last to get rid of her, he would promise that, for the next offence, Sal should be shut up.  In this way the poor woman, to use her own words, “was secluded from the visible world nearly half the time.”