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By the Light of the Soul - A Novel by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
page 98 of 586 (16%)
"They mean well," said Mr. White.

"Of course they do; but who's going to stand this eternal harping? If
women folks would only stop being so durned kind, and let folks alone
sometimes, they'd be a durned sight kinder."

"That's so," said Mr. Jonas White.

Maria's father and his bride reached home about seven on the Monday
night after Thanksgiving. Maria re-entered her old home in the
afternoon. Miss Zella Holmes, who was another teacher of hers, went
with her. Ida had requested her to open the house. Ida's former
boarding-house mistress had cooked a large turkey, and made some
cakes and pies and bread. Miss Zella Holmes drove around for Maria in
a livery carriage, and all these supplies were stowed in beside them.
On the way they stopped at the station for the new maid, whose train
was due then. She was a Hungarian girl, with a saturnine, almost
savage visage. Maria felt an awe of her, both because she was to be
their maid, and they had never kept one, and because of her
personality.

When they reached home, Miss Zella Holmes, who was very lively and
quick in her ways, though not at all pretty, gave orders to the maid
in a way which astonished Maria. She was conscious of an astonishment
at everything, which had not before possessed her. She looked at the
kitchen, the dining-room, the sitting-room, the parlor, all the old
apartments, and it was exactly as if she saw old friends with new
heads. The sideboard in the dining-room glittered with the wedding
silver and cut-glass. New pictures hung on the sitting-room and
parlor walls, beside the new paper. Wedding gifts lay on the tables.
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