I remembered." This used to aggravate Dinah dreadfully, and she
would retaliate by repeating some complimentary speech of Old Ben's,
or Long Tom's, the stockman, and then there would be no peace for an
hour.

Their successors were Clarissa and Eunice. Eunice wept sore for a
whole month, over her sweeping and cleaning. To this day I have not
the dimmest idea _why_. She gave me warning, amid floods of tears,
directly she arrived, though I could not make out any other tangible
complaint than that "the dray had jolted as never was;" and to
Clarissa, I gave warning the first day I came into the kitchen.

She received me seated on the kitchen table, swinging her legs,
which did not nearly touch the floor. She had carefully arranged
her position so as to turn her back towards me, and she went on
picking her teeth with a hair-pin. I stood aghast at this specimen
of colonial manners, which was the more astonishing as I knew the
girl had lived in the service of a gentleman's family in the North
of England for some time before she sailed.

"Dear me, Clarissa," I cried, "is that the way you behaved at
Colonel St. John's?"

Clarissa looked at me very coolly over her shoulder (I must mention
she was a very pretty girl, blue-eyed and rosy-cheeked, but with
_such_ a temper!) and, giving her plump shoulders a little shrug,
said, "No, in course not: _they_ was gentlefolks, they was."

I confess I felt rather nettled at this, and yet it was difficult to
be angry with a girl who looked like a grown up and very pretty