Ann’s principal duties were scouring “the brasses” in Grandma’s room, taking steps for her, and spinning her stint every day.  Grandma set smaller stints than Mrs. Polly.  As time went on, she helped about the cooking.  She and Grandma cooked their own victuals, and ate from a little separate table in the common kitchen.  It was a very large room, and might have accommodated several families, if they could have agreed.  There was a big oven, and a roomy fire-place.  Good Deacon Wales had probably seen no reason at all why his “beloved wife,” should not have her right therein with the greatest peace and concord.

But it soon came to pass that Mrs. Dorcas’ pots and kettles were all prepared to hang on the trammels when Grandma’s were, and an army of cakes and pies marshalled to go in the oven when Grandma had proposed to do some baking.  Grandma bore it patiently for a long time; but Ann was with difficulty restrained from freeing her small mind, and her black eyes snapped more dangerously, at every new offence.

One morning, Grandma had two loaves of “riz bread,” and some election cakes, rising, and was intending to bake them in about an hour, when they should be sufficiently light.  What should Mrs. Dorcas do, but mix up sour milk bread, and some pies with the greatest speed, and fill up the oven, before Grandma’s cookery was ready!

Grandma sent Ann out into the kitchen to put the loaves in the oven and lo and behold! the oven was full.  Ann stood staring for a minute, with a loaf of election cake in her hands; that and the bread would be ruined if they were not baked immediately, as they were raised enough.  Mrs. Dorcas had taken Thirsey and stepped out somewhere, and there was no one in the kitchen.  Ann set the election cake back on the table.  Then, with the aid of the tongs, she reached into the brick oven and took out every one of Mrs. Dorcas’ pies and loaves.  Then she arranged them deliberately in a pitiful semicircle on the hearth, and put Grandma’s cookery in the oven.

She went back to the southwest room then, and sat quietly down to her spinning.  Grandma asked if she had put the things in, and she said “Yes, ma’am,” meekly.  There was a bright red spot on each of her dark cheeks.

When Mrs. Dorcas entered the kitchen, carrying Thirsey wrapped up in an old homespun blanket, she nearly dropped as her gaze fell on the fire-place and the hearth.  There sat her bread and pies, in the most lamentable half-baked, sticky, doughy condition imaginable.  She opened the oven, and peered in.  There were Grandma’s loaves, all a lovely brown.  Out they came, with a twitch.  Luckily, they were done.  Her own went in, but they were irretrievable failures.

Of course, quite a commotion came from this.  Dorcas raised her shrill voice pretty high, and Grandma, though she had been innocent of the whole transaction, was so blamed that she gave Dorcas a piece of her mind at last.  Ann surveyed the nice brown loaves, and listened to the talk in secret satisfaction; but she had to suffer for it afterward.  Grandma punished her for the first time, and she discovered that that kind old hand was pretty firm and strong.  “No matter what you think or whether you air in the rights on’t, or not, a little gal mustn’t ever sass her elders,” said Grandma.