Mary cast a fearful glance at Patsy, who nodded and smiled as if in approbation of Miss Grundy’s command.  She dared not disobey, so Alice and her cradle were transferred to the kitchen, which was all day long kept at nearly boiling heat from the stove room adjoining.  Twice Mary attempted to shut the door between, but Miss Grundy bade her open it so she could “keep an eye on all that was going on.”  The new sights and faces round her, and more than all, Patsy’s strange appearance, frightened Alice, who set up such loud screams that Miss Grundy shook her lustily, and then cuffed Patsy, who cried because the baby did, and pulling Mary’s hair because she “most knew she felt gritty,” she went back to the cheese-tub, muttering something about “Cain’s being raised the hull time.”

At last, wholly exhausted and overcome with the heat Alice ceased screaming, and with her eyes partly closed, she lay panting for breath, while Mary, half out of her senses tipped over the dishwater, broke the yellow pitcher, and spilled a pan of morning’s milk.

“If there’s a stick on the premises, I’ll use it, or my name isn’t Grundy,” said the enraged woman, at the same time starting for a clump of alders which grew near the brook.

At this stage of affairs, Sal Furbush came dancing in curtseying, making faces, and asking Mary if she thought “the temperature of the kitchen conducive to health.”

Mary instinctively drew nearer to her, as to a friend, and grasping her dress, whispered, “Oh, Sally, Aunt Sally, don’t let her whip me for nothing,” at the same time pointing towards Miss Grundy, who was returning with an alder switch, stripping off its leaves as she came.

“Whip you?  I guess she won’t,” said Sal, and planting herself in the doorway as Miss Grundy came up, she asked, “Come you with hostile intentions?”

“Out of my way,” said Miss Grundy.  “I’ll teach, that upstart to break things when she’s mad.”  Pushing Sal aside, she entered the kitchen.

Mary retreated behind the cupboard door, and Miss Grundy was about to follow her, when Sal, with a nimble bound, sprang upon her back, and pulling her almost to the floor, snatched the whip from her hand, and broke it in twenty pieces.  How the matter would have ended is uncertain, for at that moment Mr. Parker himself appeared, and to him Miss Grundy and Sal detailed their grievances, both in the same breath.

“I can’t get at a word,” said he, and turning to the pleasant-looking woman, who was quietly paring apples, he asked what it meant.

In a plain, straightforward manner, she told all, beginning from the time when Alice was first brought into the kitchen, and adding, as an opinion of her own, that the child was suffering from heat.  Mr Parker was a good-natured, though rather weak man, and in reality slightly feared Miss Grundy.  On this occasion, however, he did not take sides with her but said, “It was ridiculous to have such works, and that if Mary wanted whipping, he would do it himself.”