“Oh, dear!” I ejaculated, involuntarily.

“Now, a’nt things in a pretty way?”

“I think they are,” I replied, and then asked, “what are you going to do?”

“I have sent John for old Jane, who helped us to clean house last spring.  But, as likely as not, she’s at work somewhere.”

Such was in fact the case, for John came in a moment after with that consoling report.

“Go and see Nancy, then,” my wife said, sharply, to John, as if he were to blame for Jane’s being at work.

John turned away slowly and went on his errand, evidently in not the most amiable mood in the world.  It was soon ascertained that Nancy couldn’t come.

“Why can’t she come?” enquired my wife.

“She says she’s doing some sewing for herself, and can’t go out this week,” replied John.

“Go and tell her that she must come.  That my house is upside down, and both the girls are sick.”

But Nancy was in no mood to comply.  John brought back another negative.

“Go and say to her, John, that I will not take no for an answer:  that she must come.  I will give her a dollar a day.”

This liberal offer of a dollar a day was effective.  Nancy came and went, to work on the next morning.  Of course, Ann did not come back; and as it was Hannah’s last day, she felt privileged to have more headache than was consistent with cleaning paint or scrubbing floors.  The work went on, therefore, very slowly.

Saturday night found us without cook or chamber-maid, and with only two rooms in order in the whole house, viz. our chambers on the second story.  By great persuasion, Nancy was induced to stay during Sunday and cook for us.

An advertisement in the newspaper on Monday morning, brought us a couple of raw Irish girls, who were taken as better than nobody at all.  With these new recruits, Mrs. Sunderland set about getting “things to right.”  Nancy plodded on, so well pleased with her wages, that she continued to get the work of one day lengthened out into two, and so managed to get a week’s job.

For the whole of another precious week we were in confusion.

“How do your new girls get along?” I asked of my wife, upon whose face I had not seen a smile for ten days.

“Don’t name them, Mr. Sunderland!  They’re not worth the powder it would take to shoot them.  Lazy, ignorant, dirty, good-for-nothing creatures.  I wouldn’t give them house-room.”

“I’m sorry to learn that.  What will you do?” I said.

“Dear knows!  I was so well suited in Ann and Hannah, and, to think that they should have served me so!  I wouldn’t have believed it of them.  But they are all as destitute of feeling and principle as they can be.  And John continues as sulky as a bear.  He pretended to shake the carpets but you might get a wheelbarrow-load of dirt out of them.  I told him so, and the impudent follow replied that he didn’t know any thing about shaking carpets; and that it wasn’t the waiter’s place, any how.”