“But you aren’t making the best of it,” said the visitor.  With that he got up, carefully lifted an iron piece in the back of the stove, turned a key thus disclosed in the pipe, and so materially altered the mood of the fire that in a few moments it stopped smoking and crackled nicely.

“Did you ever, mamma!” cried the girls.  A juggler’s feat could not have entertained them more.

“If for a time, first off, you had someone in the house who had lived in this country, you’d get on first class,” said the youth.

“But you know, my dears,” Mrs. Rexford spoke to her daughters, forgetting the young man for a moment as before, “if I had not supposed that Eliza understood the stove I should have inquired of Principal Trenholme before now.”

“May I enquire where you got your help?” asked the American.  “If she was from this locality she certainly ought to have comprehended the stove.”

“She is a native of the country.”

“As I say,” he went on, with some emphasis, “if she comes from hereabouts, or further west, she ought to have understood this sort of a stove; but, on the other hand, if she comes from the French district, where they use only the common box stove, she would not understand this kind.”

He seemed to be absorbed entirely in the stove, and in the benefit to them of having a “help,” as he called her, who understood it.

“I think she comes from the lumbering country somewhere near the St. Lawrence,” said Mrs. Rexford, examining the key in the stove-pipe.  She could not have said a moment before where Eliza had come from, but this phrase seemed to sum up neatly any remarks the girl had let fall about her father’s home.

“That accounts for it!  Will you be kind enough to let me see her?  I could explain the mechanism of this stove to her in a few words; then you, ma’am, need have no further trouble.”

She said she should be sorry to trouble him.  If the key were all, she could explain it.

“Pardon me”—­he bowed again—­“it is not all.  There are several inner dampers at the back here, which it is most important to keep free from soot.  If I might only explain it to the help, she’d know once for all.  I’d be real glad to do you that kindness.”

Mrs. Rexford had various things to say.  Her speeches were usually complex, composed of a great variety of short sentences.  She asked her daughters if they thought Eliza would object to coming down.  She said that Eliza was invaluable, but she did not always like to do as she was asked.  She thought the girl had a high temper.  She had no wish to rouse her temper; she had never seen anything of it; she didn’t wish to.  Perhaps Eliza would like to come down.  Then she asked her daughters again if they thought Eliza would come pleasantly.  Her remarks showed the track of her will as it veered round from refusal to assent, as bubbles in muddy water show the track of a diving insect.  Finally, because the young man had a strong will, and was quite decided as to what he thought best, the girls were sent to fetch Eliza.