“But, if you adopt that system, you’ll soon have them grumbling at the merest trifle you may be compelled to ask them to do.”

“So far from that, Helen, I never make a request of any domestic in the house, that is not instantly and cheerfully met.  To make you sensible of the good effects of the system I pursue of not asking to be waited on when I can help myself, I will mention that as I came down just now with these engravings in my hand, I met our chambermaid on the stairs, with a basket of clothes in her hands—­’There now, Miss Fanny,’ she said half reprovingly, ’why didn’t you call me to get that for you, and not leave your company in the parlor?’ There is no reluctance about her, you see.  She knows that I spare her whenever I can, and she is willing to oblige me, whenever she can do so.”

“Truly, she must be the eighth wonder of the world!” said, Helen in laughing surprise.  “Who ever heard of a servant that asked as a favor to be permitted to serve you?  All of which I ever saw, or heard, cared only to get out of doing every thing, and strove to be as disobliging as possible.”

“It is related of the good Oberlin,” replied Fanny, “that he was asked one day by an old female servant who had been in his house for many years, whether there were servants in heaven.  On his inquiring the reason for so singular a question, he received, in substance, this reply—­’Heaven will be no heaven to me, unless I have the privilege of ministering to your wants and comfort there as I have the privilege of doing here.  I want to be your servant even in heaven.’  Now why, Helen, do you suppose that faithful old servant was so strongly attached to Oberlin?”

“Because, I presume, he had been uniformly kind to her.”

“No doubt that was the principal reason.  And that I presume is the reason why there is no domestic in our house who will not, at any time, do for me cheerfully, and with a seeming pleasure, any thing I ask of her.  I am sure I never spoke cross to one of them in my life—­and I make it a point never to ask them to do for me what I can readily do for myself.”

“Your mother must be very fortunate in her selection of servants.  There, I presume, lies the secret.  We never had one who would bear the least consideration.  Indeed, ma makes it a rule on no account to grant a servant any indulgences whatever, it only spoils them, she says.  You must keep them right down to it, or they soon get good for nothing.”

“My mother’s system is very different,” Fanny said—­“and we have no trouble.”

The young ladies then commenced examining the prints, after which, Fanny asked to be excused a moment.  In a little while she returned with a small waiter of refreshments.  Helen did not remark upon this, and Fanny made no allusion to the fact of not having called a servant from the kitchen to do what she could so easily do herself.  A book next engaged their attention, and occupied them until dinner time.  At the stable, a tidy domestic waited with cheerful alacrity, so different from the sulky, slow attendance, at home.