the appetite by making pies sweet as sugar itself, when there were
thousands of poor souls in the world that would jump at a piece of
pie a good deal sourer than what Mr. Brenton and his idle, delicate
wife pretended wasn't fit to eat. She was sure that she put two
heapin' spoonfuls of sugar into the gooseberry pie, and half as much
into the apple pie, and Miss Brenton might make her fruit pies, as
she called 'em, herself the next time, for 'twas a privilege she
didn't covet by no means."

But Mrs. Brenton did not covet the privilege more than she did, and
after a great show of firmness on the subject, declaring to herself
and her intimate friend that she never would give up, and that there
was no use talkin' about it, she concluded she would try again, if
Mrs. Brenton would stand right at her elbow and tell her the exact
quantity of _ingredences_ she must put into each pie.

"I s'pose you calc'late to do the ironing?" she said to Emily, on
Saturday morning.

"No, I am sure I don't," was Emily's reply. "I thought you had done
it."

"Well, I havn't--I expected that you were agoing to do it. Miss
Hodges, the woman I lived with before I came here, always did it,
and she was the richest and genteelest woman in the place. She used
to say there wasn't that girl on the face of the earth, that she
would trust to starch and iron her fine linens and muslins, and
laces."

Emily merely said that she was not in the habit of doing such things