“Come in with me, Mrs. Smith,” said my neighbor, rising.  I did so, according to her request.  Sure enough, Nancy was gone.  We went up into her room, and found that she had bundled up her clothes and taken them off, but left behind her unmistakable evidence of what she had been doing.  In an old chest which Mrs. Jordon had let her use for her clothes were many packages of tea, burnt coffee, sugar, soap, eggs; a tin kettle containing a pound of butter, and various other articles of table use.

Poor Mrs. Jordon seemed bewildered.

“Let me look at that pound lump of butter,” said I.

Mrs. Jordon took up the kettle containing it.  “It isn’t my butter,” she remarked.

“But it’s mine, and the very pound she got of me yesterday for you.”

“Gracious me!” ejaculated my neighbor.  “Was anything like this ever heard?”

“She evidently borrowed on your credit and mine—­both ways,” I remarked with a smile, for all my unkind feelings toward Mrs. Jordon were gone, “and for her own benefit.”

“But isn’t it dreadful to think of, Mrs. Smith?  See what harm the creature has done!  Over and over again have I complained of your borrowing so much and returning so little; and you have doubtless made the same complaint of me.”

“I certainly have.  I felt that I was not justly dealt by.”

“It makes me sick to think of it.”  And Mrs. Jordon sank into a chair.

“Still I don’t understand about the wash-boiler and tubs that you mentioned,” she said, after a pause.

“You remember my ten tumblers,” I remarked.

“Perfectly.  But can she have broken up my tubs and boiler, or carried them off?”

On searching in the cellar we found the tubs in ruins, and the wash-boiler with a large hole in the bottom.

I shall never forget the chagrin, anger, and mortification of poor Mrs. Jordon when, at her request, Bridget pointed out at least twenty of my domestic utensils that Nancy had borrowed to replace such as she had broken or carried away. (It was a rule with Mrs. Jordon to make her servants pay for every thing they broke.)

“To think of it!” she repeated over and over again.  “Just to think of it!  Who could have dreamed of such doings?”

Mrs. Jordon was, in fact, as guiltless of the sin of troublesome borrowing from a neighbor as myself.  And yet I had seriously urged the propriety of moving out of the neighborhood to get away from her.

We both looked more closely to the doings of our servants after this pretty severe lesson; and I must freely confess, that in my own case, the result was worth all the trouble.  As trusty a girl as my cook was, I found that she would occasionally run in to a neighbor’s to borrow something or other, in order to hide her own neglect; and I only succeeded in stopping the the evil by threatening to send her away if I ever detected her in doing it again.

CHAPTER XXIX.