should give her by the year. 'Oh Gimini!' exclaimed the damsel, with a
loud laugh, 'you be a downright Englisher, sure enough. I should like to
see a young lady engage by the year in America! I hope I shall get a
husband before many months, or I expect I shall be an outright old maid,
for I be most seventeen already; besides, mayhap I may want to go to
school. You must just give me a dollar and a half a week; and mother's
slave, Phillis, must come over once a week, I expect, from t'other side
the water, to help me clean.' I agreed to the bargain, of course, with all
dutiful submission; and seeing she was preparing to set to work in a
yellow dress parsemé with red roses, I gently hinted, that I thought it
was a pity to spoil so fine a gown, and that she had better change it.
''Tis just my best and worst,' she answered, 'for I've got no other.' And
in truth I found that this young lady had left the paternal mansion with
no more clothes of any kind than what she had on. I immediately gave her
money to purchase what was necessary for cleanliness and decency, and set
to work with my daughters to make her a gown. She grinned applause when
our labour was completed, but never uttered the slightest expression of
gratitude for that or for anything else we could do for her. She was
constantly asking us to lend her different articles of dress, and when we
declined it, she said, 'Well, I never seed such grumpy folks as you be;
there is several young ladies of my acquaintance what goes to live out now
and then with the old women about the town, and they and their gurls
always lends them what they asks for; I guess, you Inglish thinks we
should poison your things, just as bad as if we was negurs.' And here I
beg to assure the reader, that whenever I give conversations, they were
not made _à loisir_, but were written down immediately after they occurred,
with all the verbal fidelity my memory permitted."

"This young lady left me at the end of two months, because I refused to
lend her money enough to buy a silk dress to go to a ball, saying, 'Then