At Home with the dines | Page 2

"Is it you and your husband, you mean?"
"It is. I wish you would come and keep house for us."
"I'd like to, Missis. I would, indeed."
Again I looked at her and loved her harder.
"Have you any references?" I asked.
"None except the recommendations of the people who have been
coming to the house for twenty years. The family are all scattered."
"I have none either," I said. "Shall we take each other on trust?"
"If you are willing," she laughed.
And so we selected each other, and I am just as much flattered as she
could possibly be, for neither one so far has given the other notice.
This sketch can only serve to introduce her, as it would take a book to
do her justice. She has snow-white hair and a face in which decision
and kindness are mingled. She has a tongue which drops blessings and
denunciations with equal facility. Born of Irish parents, she belongs to
the gentry, yet no fighting Irishman could match her temper when
roused, and the Billingsgate which passes through the dumb-waiter

between our Mary and the tradespeople is enough to turn the colour of
the walls. Yet though I have seen her pull a recreant grocery boy in by
his hair, literally by his hair, tradesmen, one and all, adore her, and do
errands for her which ought to earn their discharge, and they bring her
the pick of the market to avoid having anything less choice thrown in
their faces when they come for the next order. She made the ice-man
grind coffee for her for a week because he once forgot to come up and
put the ice into the refrigerator.
She went among all the tradespeople, and named prices to them which
we were to pay if they obtained our valuable patronage. One little man
who kept a sort of general store was so impressed by her manner and
the awful lies she told about the grandeur of her employers that he
presented her with a pitcher in the shape of the figure of Napoleon.
Something so very absurd happened in connection with this pitcher
some three years later that I particularly remembered the time she got it,
and the little man who gave it to her.
She kept house for seven years in Paris, which explains her reverence
for food, for we have discovered that the only way to dispose of things
is to eat them. Otherwise, in different guises, they return to us until in
desperation the Angel sprinkles cigar-ashes over what is left. She pays
all the bills and contests her rights to the last penny, once keeping the
baker out of his whole bill for five months because he would not
recognize her claim for a receipted bill for eight cents which she had
paid at the door. As to her relation to us in a social way, those of you
who have lived in the South will understand her privileges, when I say
that she is a white "Mammy." Her dear old heart is pure gold, and such
her quick sympathy that if I want to cry I have to lock myself in my
room where she won't see me, for if she sees tears in my eyes she
comes and puts her arms around me and weeps, too, without even
knowing why, but just with the heavenly pity of one of God's own,
although before her eyes are dry she may be damning the butcher in
language which curdles the blood.
She abhors profanity, and never mingles holy names in her sentences
which contain fluent d's, but being an excellent Catholic enables her to

accentuate her remarks with exclamations which she says are prayers;
and as these are never denunciatory her theory is most conscientiously
lived up to.
In our first housekeeping, our rawness in all matters practical wrung
Mary's heart. She had grown up from a slip of a girl in the employ of
one family, and ours was only her second experiment in "living out."
As her first employers were people of wealth and with half-grown
grandchildren when their magnificent home was finally broken up, you
can imagine the change to Mary of living with newly married people,
engaged in their first struggle with the world. But ours was just the
problem which appealed to the motherly heart of our spinster Mary, for
she yearned over us with an exceeding great yearning, and of her value
to us you yourselves shall be the judge.
The first thing I remember which called my attention to Mary's firm
manner of doing business was one day when I was writing letters in the
Angel's study. We had only moved in the day before, and the ink on the
lease was hardly dry, when