upstairs or down, for the name of the 'ouse, but when
Mr. Jollie, the French valet that comes here frequent with the master's
partner, wants dripped coffee and the fat scraped clean from his chop
shank, else the flavour's spoiled for him, and Bruce the mistress'
brother's man wants boiled coffee, and thick fat left on his breakfast
ham, what stands between my poor 'ead and a h'assleyum? that's what I
wants to know. Three cooks I've had this very season, it really bein' the
duty of the first kitchen maid to cook for the servants' hall; but if a
cook is suited to a kitchen maid, as is most important, she'll stand by
her. No, Martha Corkle, wages is 'igh, no doubt,--fortunes to what they
were when we were gells,--but not 'igh for the worry; and bein' in
service ain't what it were.'"

Then I knew that Martha, even as her bosom heaves over her friend's
grievances, was also sighing with content at thought of Timothy Saunders
and her own lot; and I recalled the Lady of the Bluffs' passing remark,
and felt that I am only beginning to realize the deliciousness of
"comfortable poverty."

* * * * *

Miss Lavinia and I spent some time browsing among the shops, finally
bringing up at an old conservative dry goods concern in Broadway, the
most satisfactory place to shop in New York, because there is never a
crowd, and the salesmen, many of them grown gray in the service, take an
Old World interest in their wares and in you.

While I was trying to convince Miss Lavinia as to the need of the
serviceable, she was equally determined to decoy me toward the frivolous;
and I yielded, I may say fell, to the extent of buying a white crepey
sort of pattern gown that had an open work white lilac pattern
embroidered on it. It certainly was very lovely, and it is nice to have a
really good gown in reserve, even if a plainer one that will stand
hugging, sticky fingers, and dogs' damp noses is more truly enjoyable.

N.B.--I must get over apologizing to myself when I buy respectable
clothes. It savours too much of Aunt Lot's old habit of saying, every
time she bought a best gown, and I remonstrated with her for the colour
(it was always black in those days; since she's married the Reverend
Jabez she's taken to greens), "When I consider that a black dress would
be suitable to be buried in, it seems less like a vain luxury."

We were admiring the dainty muslins, but only in the "abstract," when I
looked up, conscio