“He did?”

“Yes, he did.  I was on the eve of ordering him to leave the house.”

“I’ll save you that trouble,” I said, a little warmly.

“Don’t say any thing to him, if you please, Mr. Sunderland,” returned my wife.  “There couldn’t be a better man about the house than he is, for all ordinary purposes.  If we should lose him, we shall never get another half so good.  I wish I’d hired a man to shake the carpets at once; they would have been much better done, and I should have had John’s cheerful assistance about the house, which would have been a great deal.”

That evening I overheard, accidentally, a conversation between John and the new girls, which threw some light upon the whole matter.

“John,” said one of them, “what made Mrs. Sunderland’s cook and chamber maid go aff and lave her right in the middle of house-clainin’?”

“Because Mrs. Sunderland, instead of hiring a woman, as every lady does, tried to put it all off upon them.”

“Indade! and was that it?”

“Yes, it was.  They never thought of leaving until they found they were to be imposed upon; and, to save fifty cents or a dollar, she made me shake the carpets.  I never did such a thing in my life before.  I think I managed to leave about as much dirt in as I shook out.  But I’ll leave the house before I do it again.”

“So would I, John.  It was downright mane imposition, so it was.  Set a waiter to shaking carpets!”

“I don’t think much has been saved,” remarked the waiter, “for Nancy has had a dollar a day ever since she has been here.”

“Indade!”

“Yes; and besides that, Mrs. Sunderland has had to work like a dog herself.  All this might have been saved, if she had hired a couple of women at sixty-two and a half cents a day for two or three days, and paid for having the carpets shaken; that’s the way other people do.  The house would have been set to rights in three or four days, and every thing going on like clockwork.”

“I heard no more.  I wanted to hear no more; it was all as clear as day to me.  When I related to Mrs. Sunderland what John had said, she was, at first, quite indignant.  But the reasonableness of the thing soon became so apparent that she could not but acknowledge that she had acted very unwisely.

“This is another specimen of your saving at the spigot,” I said, playfully.

“There, Mr. Sunderland! not a word more, if you please, of that,” she returned, her cheek more flushed than usual.  “It is my duty, as your wife, to dispense with prudence in your household; and if, in seeking to do so, I have run a little into extremes, I think it ill becomes you to ridicule or censure me.  Dear knows!  I have not sought my own ease or comfort in the matter.”

“My dear, good wife,” I quickly said, in a soothing voice, “I have neither meant to ridicule nor censure you—­nothing was farther from my thoughts.”