Work: A Story of Experience | Page 6

who stood pouring out last words with spectacles too dim for
seeing. Fat Ben swung up the trunk, slammed the door, mounted his
perch, and the ancient vehicle swayed with premonitory symptoms of
departure.

Then something smote Christie's heart. "Stop!" she cried, and springing
out ran back into the dismal room where the old man sat. Straight up to
him she went with outstretched hand, saying steadily, though her face
was full of feeling:
"Uncle, I'm not satisfied with that good-bye. I don't mean to be
sentimental, but I do want to say, 'Forgive me!' I see now that I might
have made you sorry to part with me, if I had tried to make you love
me more. It's too late now, but I'm not too proud to confess when I'm
wrong. I want to part kindly; I ask your pardon; I thank you for all
you've done for me, and I say good-bye affectionately now."
Mr. Devon had a heart somewhere, though it seldom troubled him; but
it did make itself felt when the girl looked at him with his dead sister's
eyes, and spoke in a tone whose unaccustomed tenderness was a
reproach.
Conscience had pricked him more than once that week, and he was glad
to own it now; his rough sense of honor was touched by her frank
expression, and, as he answered, his hand was offered readily.
"I like that, Kitty, and think the better of you for't. Let bygones be
bygones. I gen'lly got as good as I give, and I guess I deserved some
on't. I wish you wal, my girl, I heartily wish you wal, and hope you
won't forgit that the old house ain't never shet aginst you."
Christie astonished him with a cordial kiss; then bestowing another
warm hug on Aunt Niobe, as she called the old lady in a tearful joke,
she ran into the carriage, taking with her all the sunshine of the place.
Christie found Mrs. Flint a dreary woman, with "boarders" written all
over her sour face and faded figure. Butcher's bills and house rent
seemed to fill her eyes with sleepless anxiety; thriftless cooks and
saucy housemaids to sharpen the tones of her shrill voice; and an
incapable husband to burden her shoulders like a modern "Old man of
the sea."
A little room far up in the tall house was at the girl's disposal for a
reasonable sum, and she took possession, feeling very rich with the
hundred dollars Uncle Enos gave her, and delightfully independent,
with no milk-pans to scald; no heavy lover to elude; no humdrum
district school to imprison her day after day.
For a week she enjoyed her liberty heartily, then set about finding
something to do. Her wish was to be a governess, that being the usual

refuge for respectable girls who have a living to get. But Christie soon
found her want of accomplishments a barrier to success in that line, for
the mammas thought less of the solid than of the ornamental branches,
and wished their little darlings to learn French before English, music
before grammar, and drawing before writing.
So, after several disappointments, Christie decided that her education
was too old-fashioned for the city, and gave up the idea of teaching.
Sewing she resolved not to try till every thing else failed; and, after a
few more attempts to get writing to do, she said to herself, in a fit of
humility and good sense: "I'll begin at the beginning, and work my way
up. I'll put my pride in my pocket, and go out to service. Housework I
like, and can do well, thanks to Aunt Betsey. I never thought it
degradation to do it for her, so why should I mind doing it for others if
they pay for it? It isn't what I want, but it's better than idleness, so I'll
try it!"
Full of this wise resolution, she took to haunting that purgatory of the
poor, an intelligence office. Mrs. Flint gave her a recommendation, and
she hopefully took her place among the ranks of buxom German,
incapable Irish, and "smart" American women; for in those days
foreign help had not driven farmers' daughters out of the field, and
made domestic comfort a lost art.
At first Christie enjoyed the novelty of the thing, and watched with
interest the anxious housewives who flocked in demanding that rara
avis, an angel at nine shillings a week; and not finding it, bewailed the
degeneracy of the times. Being too honest to profess herself absolutely
perfect in every known branch of house-work, it was some time before
she suited herself. Meanwhile, she was questioned and lectured, half
engaged and kept waiting, dismissed for a whim, and so worried that
she began to regard herself as the