you had not sent in. I have not a single
tumbler left. It is too bad! I don't care so much for the loss of
the tumblers, as I do for the mortifying position it placed me in
toward a neighbor.'"

"Upon my word!" exclaimed my husband. "That is a beautiful
illustration, sure enough, of my remarks about what people may
suffer in the good opinion of others, through the conduct of their
servants in this very thing. No doubt Mrs. Jordon, as you suggest,
is guiltless of a good deal of blame now laid at her door. It was a
fair opportunity for you to give her some hints on the subject. You
might have opened her eyes a little, or at least diminished the
annoyance you had been, and still are enduring."

"Yes, the opportunity was a good one, and I ought to have improved
it. But I did not and the whole system, sanctioned or not sanctioned
by Mrs. Jordon, is in force against me."

"And will continue, unless some means be adopted by which to abate
the nuisance."

"Seriously, Mr. Smith," said I, "I am clear for removing from the
neighborhood."

But Mr. Smith said,

"Nonsense, Jane!" A form of expression he uses, when he wishes to
say that my proposition or suggestion is perfectly ridiculous, and
not to be thought of for a moment.

"What is to be done?" I asked. "Bear the evil?"

"Correct it, if you can."

"And if not, bear it the best I can?"

"Yes, that is my advice."

This was about the extent of aid I ever received from my husband in
any of my domestic difficulties. He is a first-rate abstractionist,
and can see to a hair how others ought to act in every imaginable,
and I was going to say unimaginable case; but is just as backward
about telling people what he thinks of them, and making everybody
with whom he has anything to do toe the mark, as I am.

As the idea of moving to get rid of my borrowing neighbor was
considered perfect nonsense by Mr. Smith, I began to think seriously
how I should check the evil, now grown almost insufferable. On the
next morning the coffee-mill was borrowed to begin with.

"Hasn't Mrs. Jordon got a coffee-mill of her own?" I asked of
Bridget.

"Yes, ma'am," she replied, "but it is such a poor one that Nancy
won't use it. She says it takes her forever and a day to grind
enough coffee for breakfast."

"Does she get ours every morning?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Nancy opened the kitchen door at this moment--our back gates were
side by side--and said--

"Mrs. Jordon says, will you oblige her