he has set down his foot that, come what will,
there shall not be a blow struck in this house, except what he or I
strike; and he does it in a way that I really dare not cross him. Well,
you may see what that leads to; for St. Clare wouldn't raise his hand,
if every one of them walked over him, and I--you see how cruel it would
be to require me to make the exertion. Now, you know these servants are
nothing but grown-up children."

"I don't know anything about it, and I thank the Lord that I don't!"
said Miss Ophelia, shortly.

"Well, but you will have to know something, and know it to your cost,
if you stay here. You don't know what a provoking, stupid, careless,
unreasonable, childish, ungrateful set of wretches they are."

Marie seemed wonderfully supported, always, when she got upon this
topic; and she now opened her eyes, and seemed quite to forget her
languor.

"You don't know, and you can't, the daily, hourly trials that beset
a housekeeper from them, everywhere and every way. But it's no use to
complain to St. Clare. He talks the strangest stuff. He says we have
made them what they are, and ought to bear with them. He says their
faults are all owing to us, and that it would be cruel to make the fault
and punish it too. He says we shouldn't do any better, in their place;
just as if one could reason from them to us, you know."

"Don't you believe that the Lord made them of one blood with us?" said
Miss Ophelia, shortly.

"No, indeed not I! A pretty story, truly! They are a degraded race."

"Don't you think they've got immortal souls?" said Miss Ophelia, with
increasing indignation.

"O, well," said Marie, yawning, "that, of course--nobody doubts that.
But as to putting them on any sort of equality with us, you know, as if
we could be compared, why, it's impossible! Now, St. Clare really has
talked to me as if keeping Mammy from her husband was like keeping me
from mine. There's no comparing in this way. Mammy couldn't have the
feelings that I should. It's a different thing altogether,--of course,
it is,--and yet St. Clare pretends not to see it. And just as if Mammy
could love her little dirty babies as I love Eva! Yet St. Clare once
really and soberly tried to persuade me that it was my duty, with my
weak health, and all I suffer, to let Mammy go back, and take somebody
else in her place. That was a little too much even for _me_ to bear. I
don't often show my feelings, I make it a principle to endure eve