I couldn’t help a passing apology, on the ground of a new domestic, and then proceeded to the business of pouring out the tea.  The cups were handed around, and I soon noticed that my guests were sipping from their spoons in a very unsatisfactory manner.  I was in the act of filling my own cup from the tea urn, when I missed the plate of sausages, about which I had boasted to my lady friends as something a little better than were usually to be obtained.  So I rung the table bell.  Alice presently made her appearance.

“Alice,” said I, “where are the sausages I told you to cook?  You surely hav’nt forgotten them?”

“Och, no indade, mum.  They’re there.”

“Where?  I don’t see them.”

And my eyes ran around the table.

“They’re wid the ta mum, sure!”

“With the tea?”

“Sure, mum, they’re wid the ta.  Ye towld me yees wanted the sausages wid the ta; and sure they’re there.  I biled ’em well.”

A light now flashed over my mind.  Throwing up the lid of the tea urn, I thrust in a fork, which immediately came in contact with a hard substance.  I drew it forth, and exhibited a single link of a well “biled” sausage.

Let me draw a veil over what followed.

CHAPTER XIV.

Not A rag on their backs.

There are, among the many things which Mr. Smith, like other men, will not understand, frequent difficulties about the children’s clothing.  He seems to think that frocks and trowsers grow spontaneously; or that the dry goods, once bought and brought into the house, will resolve into the shapes desired, and fit themselves to the children’s backs, like Cindarella’s suit in the nursery tale.  Now, I never did claim to be a sprite; and I am not sure that the experience of all housekeepers will bear me out in the opinion that the longer a woman is married, the less she becomes like a fairy.

Stitch! stitch! stitch!  Hood’s Song of the Shirt, which every body has heard and admired, is certainly most eloquent and pathetic upon the sufferings and difficulties of sewing girls.  “Much yet remains unsung,” particularly in regard to the ceaseless labors of women who are as rich as Cornelia in muslin-rending, habit-cloth-destroying, children’s-plaid-rubbing—­jewels!  I am sure that the Roman matron never went shopping.  I am sure that she did not undertake to keep her own children’s clothing in repair; for if she had, she could not have been ready, at a moment’s warning, to put forward her troublesome charge as specimen jewels.  Do all I can, my little comforts never are “fit to be seen!”