Mistress and Maid

Mistress and Maid

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Title: Mistress and Maid
Author: Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
Release Date: September 15, 2004 [EBook #13461]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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AND MAID ***

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MISTRESS AND MAID. A Household Story.
BY
MISS MULOCH, AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN,"
"OLIVE," "THE OGILVIES," "THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY,"
"NOTHING NEW," "AGATHA'S HUSBAND," &c,, &c.

RICHMOND: WEST & JOHNSTON, PUBLISHERS. 1864. Printed at
the Lynchburg "Virginian" Book and Job Office.
MISTRESS AND MAID.
CHAPTER I.
She was a rather tall, awkward, and strongly-built girl of about fifteen.
This was the first impression the "maid" gave to her "mistresses," the
Misses Leaf, when she entered their kitchen, accompanied by her
mother, a widow and washer-woman, by name Mrs. Hand. I must
confess, when they saw the damsel, the ladies felt a certain twinge of
doubt as to whether they had not been rash in offering to take her;
whether it would not have been wiser to have gone on in their old
way--now, alas! grown into a very old way, so as almost to make them
forget they had ever had any other--and done without a servant still.
Many consultations had the three sisters held before such a
revolutionary extravagance was determined on. But Miss Leaf was
beginning both to look and to feel "not so young as she had been;" Miss
Selina ditto; though, being still under forty, she would not have
acknowledged it for the world. And Miss Hilary young, bright, and
active as she was, could by no possibility do every thing that was to be
done in the little establishment: be, for instance, in three places at
once--in the school-room, teaching little boys and girls, in the kitchen
cooking dinner, and in the rooms up stairs busy at house-maid's work.
Besides, much of her time was spent in waiting upon "poor Selina,"
who frequently was, or fancied her self, too ill to take any part in either
the school or house duties.
Though, the thing being inevitable, she said little about it, Miss Leaf's
heart was often sore to see Hilary's pretty hands smeared with blacking
of grates, and roughened with scouring of floors. To herself this sort of
thing had become natural--but Hilary!
All the time of Hilary's childhood, the youngest of the family had of
course, been spared all house-work; and afterward her studies had left
no time for it. For she was a clever girl, with a genuine love of

knowledge Latin, Greek, and even the higher branches of arithmetic
and mathematics, were not beyond her range; and this she found much
more interesting than washing dishes or sweeping floors. True, she
always did whatever domestic duty she was told to do; but her bent was
not in the household line. She had only lately learned to "see dust," to
make a pudding, to iron a shirt; and, moreover, to reflect, as she woke
up to the knowledge of how these things should be done, and how
necessary they were, what must have been her eldest sister's lot during
all these twenty years! What pains, what weariness, what eternal toil
must Johanna have silently endured in order to do all those things
which till now had seemed to do themselves!
Therefore, after much cogitation as to the best and most prudent way to
amend matters, and perceiving with her clear common sense that,
willing as she might be to work in the kitchen, her own time would be
much more valuably spent in teaching their growing school. It was
Hilary who these Christmas holidays, first started the bold idea, "We
must have a servant;" and therefore, it being necessary to begin with a
very small servant on very low wages, (£3 per annum was, I fear the
maximum), did they take this Elizabeth Hand. So, hanging behind her
parent, an anxious-eyed, and rather sad-voiced woman, did Elizabeth
enter the kitchen of the Misses Leaf.
The ladies were all there. Johanna arranging the table for their early tea:
Selina lying on the sofa trying to cut bread and butter: Hilary on her
knees before the fire, making the bit of toast, her eldest sister's one
luxury. This was the picture that her three mistresses presented to
Elizabeth's eyes: which, though they seemed to notice nothing, must, in
reality, have noticed every thing.
"I've brought my daughter, ma'am, as you