you ARE gettin' English."

"Indeed I'm not!" I declared, with emphasis. "My experience with an
English relative is sufficient of itself to prevent that. Miss Frances
Morley and I are compatriots for the summer only."

CHAPTER IX

In Which We Make the Acquaintance of Mayberry and a Portion of
Burgleston Bogs

We migrated to Mayberry the following Monday, as we had agreed to do.
Miss Morley went with us, of course. I secured a first-class apartment
for our party and the journey was a comfortable and quiet one. Our
invalid was too weak to talk a great deal even if she had wished, which
she apparently did not. Johnson, the groom, met us at Haddington on Hill
and we drove to the rectory. There Miss Morley, very tired and worn out,
was escorted to her room by Hephzy and Charlotte, the housemaid. She was
perfectly willing to remain in that room, in fact she did not leave it
for several days.

Meanwhile Hephzy and I were doing our best to become acquainted with our
new and novel mode of life. Hephzy took charge of the household and was,
in a way, quite in her element; in another way she was distinctly out of
it.

"I did think I was gettin' used to bein' waited on, Hosy," she confided,
"but it looks as if I'll have to begin all over again. Managin' one
hired girl like Susanna was a job and I tell you I thought managin'
three, same as we've got here, would be a staggerer. But it isn't.
Somehow the kind of help over here don't seem to need managin'. They
manage me more than I do them. There's Mrs. Wigham, the cook. Mrs. Cole
told me she was a 'superior' person and I guess she is--at any rate,
she's superior to me in some things. She knows what a 'gooseberry fool'
is and I'm sure I don't. I felt like another kind of fool when she told
me she was goin' to make one, as a 'sweet,' for dinner to-night. As nigh
as I can make out it's a sort of gooseberry pie, but _I_ should never
have called a gooseberry pie a 'sweet'; a 'sour' would have been better,
accordin' to my reckonin'. However, all desserts over here are 'sweets'
and fruit is dessert. Then there's Charlotte, the housemaid, and Baker,
the 'between-maid'--between upstairs and down, I suppose that means--and
Grimmer, the gardener, and Johnson, the boy that takes care of the
horse. Each one of 'em seems to know exactly what their own job is and
just as exactly where it leaves off and t'other's job begins. I never
saw such obligin' but independent folks in my life. As f