of us had a cook and a waiter, a housekeeper and an up-stairs girl.
My housekeeper was the boss prize in the package. Her name was Mabel
Seabury, and she was young and quiet and as pretty as the first bunch
of Mayflowers in the spring. And a lady--whew! The first time I set
opposite to her at table I made up my mind I wouldn't drink out of my
sasser if I scalded the lining off my throat.

She was city born and brought up, but she wa'n't one of your common "He!
he! ain't you turrible!" lunch-counter princesses, with a head like a
dandelion gone to seed and a fish-net waist. You bet she wa'n't! Her
dad had had money once, afore he tried to beat out Jonah and swallow
the stock exchange whale. After that he was skipper of a little society
library up to Cambridge, and she kept house for him. Then he died and
left her his blessing, and some of Peter Brown's wife's folks, that knew
her when she was well off, got her the job of housekeeper here with us.

The only trouble she made was first along, and that wa'n't her fault.
I thought at one time we'd have to put up a wire fence to keep them
college waiters away from her. They hung around her like a passel of
gulls around a herring boat. She was nice to 'em, too, but when you're
just so nice to everybody and not nice enough to any special one, the
prospect ain't encouraging. So they give it up, but there wa'n't a male
on the place, from old Dr. Blatt, mixer of Blatt's Burdock Bitters and
Blatt's Balm for Beauty, down to the boy that emptied the ashes, who
wouldn't have humped himself on all fours and crawled eight miles if
she'd asked him to. And that includes me and Cap'n Jonadab, and we're
about as tough a couple of women-proof old hulks as you'll find afloat.

Jonadab took a special interest in her. It pretty nigh broke his heart
to think she was running my house instead of his. He thought she'd ought