CHAPTER XXV.

DOLLY BECOMES ILLUSTRIOUS.

At the Parsonage the illness in Zeph's household brought social revolution.

The whole burden of family ministration, which had rested on Nabby's young and comely shoulders, fell with a sudden weight upon those of Mrs. Cushing. This was all the more unfortunate because the same exigency absorbed the services of Mis' Persis, who otherwise might have been relied on to fill the gap.

But now was Dolly's hour for feeling her own importance and assuming womanly cares. She rushed to the front with enthusiasm and attacked every branch of domestic service, with a zeal not always according to knowledge but making her on the whole quite an efficient assistance. She washed and wiped dishes, and cleared, and cleaned, and dusted, and set away, as she had seen Nabby do; she propped herself on a stool at the ironing-table and plied the irons vigorously; and, resenting the suggestion that she should confine herself to towels and napkins, struck out boldly upon the boys' shirts and other complicated tasks, burning her fingers and heating her face in the determination to show her prowess and ability.

"Dolly is really quite a little woman," she overheard her mother saying to her father; and her bosom swelled with conscious pride and she worked all the faster.

"Now, you boys must be very careful not to make any more trouble than you can help," she said with an air of dignity as Will and Bob burst into the kitchen and surprised her at the ironing-table. "Nabby is gone, and there is nobody to do the work but me."

"Upon my word, Mrs. Puss!" said Will, stopping short and regarding the little figure with a serio-comic air. "How long since you've been so grand? How tall we're getting in our own eyes—oh my!" and Will seized her off the ironing stool and, perching her on his shoulder, danced round the table with her in spite of her indignant protests.

Dolly resented this invasion of her dignity with all her little might, and the confusion called her mother down out of the chamber where she had been at work.

"Boys, I'm astonished at you," said she. Now Mrs. Cushing had been "astonished" at these same boys for about thirteen or fourteen years, so that the sensation could not be quite overpowering at this time.

"Well, Mother," said Will, with brisk assurance, setting Dolly down on her stool, "I was only giving Dolly a ride," and he looked up in her face with the confident smile that generally covered all his sins, and brought out an answering smile on the face of his mother.

"Come now, boys," she said, "Nabby has gone home; you must be good, considerate children, make as little trouble as possible and be all the help you can."

"But, Mother, Dolly was taking such grown-up airs, as if she was our mother. I had just to give her a lesson, to show her who she was."

"Dolly is a good, helpful little girl, and I don't know what I should do without her," said Mrs. Cushing; "she does act like a grown-up woman, and I am glad of it."

Dolly's face flushed with delight; she felt that at last she had reached the summit of her ambition: she was properly appreciated!

"And you boys," continued Mrs. Cushing, "must act like grown-up men, and be considerate and helpful."

"All right, Mother; only give the orders. Bob and I can make the fires, and bring in the wood, and fill the tea-kettle, and do lots of things." And, to do the boys justice, they did do their best to lighten the domestic labors of this interregnum.

The exigency would have been far less serious were it not that the minister's house in those days was a sort of authorized hotel, not only for the ministerial brotherhood but for all even remotely connected with the same, and all that miscellaneous drift-wood of hospitality that the eddies of life cast ashore. The minister's table was always a nicely-kept one; the Parsonage was a place where it was pleasant to abide; and so the guest-chamber of the Parsonage was seldom empty. In fact, this very week a certain Brother Waring, an ex-minister from East Poganuc, who wanted to consult the Poganuc Doctor, came, unannounced, with his wife and trunk, and they settled themselves comfortably down.

Such inflictions were in those days received in the literal spirit of the primitive command to "use hospitality without grudging;" but when a week had passed and news came that Mrs. Higgins was going down to the grave in quick consumption, and that Nabby would be wanted at home for an indefinite period, it became necessary to find some one to fill her place at the Parsonage, and Hiel Jones's mother accepted the position temporarily—considering her services in the minister's family as a sort of watch upon the walls of Zion. Not that she was by any means insensible to the opportunity of receiving worldly wages; but she wished it explicitly understood that she was not going out to service. She was "helpin' Mis' Cushing." The help, however, was greatly balanced in this case by certain attendant hindrances such as seem inseparable from the whole class of "lady helps."

Mrs. Jones had indeed a very satisfactory capability in all domestic processes; her bread was of the whitest and finest, her culinary skill above mediocrity, and she was an accomplished laundress. But so much were her spirits affected by the construction that might possibly be put on her position in the family that she required soothing attentions and expressions of satisfaction and confidence every hour of the day to keep her at all comfortable. She had stipulated expressly to be received at the family table, and, further than this, to be brought into the room and introduced to all callers; and, this being done, demeaned herself in a manner so generally abused and melancholy that poor Mrs. Cushing could not but feel that the burden which had been taken off from her muscles had been thrown with double weight upon her nerves.

After a call of any of the "town-hill" aristocracy, Mrs. Jones would be sure to be found weeping in secret places, because 'Mrs. Colonel Davenport had looked down on her,' or the Governor's lady 'didn't speak to her,' and she 'should like to know what such proud folks was goin' to do when they got to heaven!' Then there was always an implication that if ministers only did their duty all these distinctions of rank would cease, and everybody be just as good as everybody else. The poor body had never even dreamed of a kingdom of heaven where the Highest was "as him that serveth;" and what with Mrs. Jones's moans, and her tears, and her frequent sick headaches, accompanied by abundant use of camphor, Mrs. Cushing, in some desperate moments, felt as if she would rather die doing her own work than wear herself out in the task of conciliating a substitute.

Then, though not a serious evil, it certainly was somewhat disagreeable to observe Mrs. Jones's statistical talents and habits of minute inspection, and to feel that she was taking notes which would put all the parish in possession of precise information as to the condition of Mrs. Cushing's tablecloths, towels, napkins, and all the minutiæ of her housekeeping arrangements. There is, of course, no sin or harm in such particularity; but almost every lady prefers the shades of poetic obscurity to soften the details of her domestic interior. In those days, when the minister was the central object of thought in the parish, it was specially undesirable that all this kind of information should be distributed, since there were many matrons who had opinions all ready made as to the proper manner in which a minister's wife should expend his salary and order his household.

It was therefore with genuine joy that, after a fortnight's care of this kind, a broad-faced, jolly African woman was welcomed by Mrs. Cushing to her kitchen in place of Mrs. Jones. Dinah was picked up in a distant parish, and entered upon her labors with an unctuous satisfaction and exuberance that was a positive relief after the recent tearful episode. It is true she was slow, and somewhat disorderly, but she was unfailingly good-natured, and had no dignity to be looked after; and so there was rest for a while in the Parsonage.