“‘It was the first I had heard about it,’ she said.  ’Nancy, it now appears, borrowed of you to hide her own breakage, and I should have been none the wiser, if you had not sent in.  I have not a single tumbler left.  It is too bad!  I don’t care so much for the loss of the tumblers, as I do for the mortifying position it placed me in toward a neighbor.’”

“Upon my word!” exclaimed my husband.  “That is a beautiful illustration, sure enough, of my remarks about what people may suffer in the good opinion of others, through the conduct of their servants in this very thing.  No doubt Mrs. Jordon, as you suggest, is guiltless of a good deal of blame now laid at her door.  It was a fair opportunity for you to give her some hints on the subject.  You might have opened her eyes a little, or at least diminished the annoyance you had been, and still are enduring.”

“Yes, the opportunity was a good one, and I ought to have improved it.  But I did not and the whole system, sanctioned or not sanctioned by Mrs. Jordon, is in force against me.”

“And will continue, unless some means be adopted by which to abate the nuisance.”

“Seriously, Mr. Smith,” said I, “I am clear for removing from the neighborhood.”

But Mr. Smith said,

“Nonsense, Jane!” A form of expression he uses, when he wishes to say that my proposition or suggestion is perfectly ridiculous, and not to be thought of for a moment.

“What is to be done?” I asked.  “Bear the evil?”

“Correct it, if you can.”

“And if not, bear it the best I can?”

“Yes, that is my advice.”

This was about the extent of aid I ever received from my husband in any of my domestic difficulties.  He is a first-rate abstractionist, and can see to a hair how others ought to act in every imaginable, and I was going to say unimaginable case; but is just as backward about telling people what he thinks of them, and making everybody with whom he has anything to do toe the mark, as I am.

As the idea of moving to get rid of my borrowing neighbor was considered perfect nonsense by Mr. Smith, I began to think seriously how I should check the evil, now grown almost insufferable.  On the next morning the coffee-mill was borrowed to begin with.

“Hasn’t Mrs. Jordon got a coffee-mill of her own?” I asked of Bridget.

“Yes, ma’am,” she replied, “but it is such a poor one that Nancy won’t use it.  She says it takes her forever and a day to grind enough coffee for breakfast.”

“Does she get ours every morning?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Nancy opened the kitchen door at this moment—­our back gates were side by side—­and said—­

“Mrs. Jordon says, will you oblige her so much as to let her have an egg to clear the coffee?  I forgot to tell her yesterday that ours were all gone.”

“Certainly,” I said.  “Bridget, give Nancy an egg.”

“Mrs. Jordon is very sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Smith,” said Nancy, re-appearing in a little while, and finding me still in the kitchen, “but she says if you will lend her a bowl of sugar it will be a great accommodation.  I forgot to tell her yesterday that the sugar was all gone.”