l the
other parts of the establishment, now entered the kitchen. Dinah had
heard, from various sources, what was going on, and resolved to stand on
defensive and conservative ground,--mentally determined to oppose and
ignore every new measure, without any actual and observable contest.

The kitchen was a large, brick-floored apartment, with a great
old-fashioned fireplace stretching along one side of it,--an arrangement
which St. Clair had vainly tried to persuade Dinah to exchange for the
convenience of a modern cook-stove. Not she. No Pusseyite, or
conservative of any school, was ever more inflexibly attached to
time-honored inconveniences than Dinah.

When St. Clair had first returned from the North, impressed with the
system and order of his uncle's kitchen arrangements, he had largely
provided his own with an array of cupboards, drawers, and various
apparatus, to induce systematic regulation, under the sanguine illusion
that it would be of any possible assistance to Dinah in her
arrangements. He might as well have provided them for a squirrel or a
magpie. The more drawers and closets there were, the more hiding-holes
could Dinah make for the accommodation of old rags, hair-combs, old
shoes, ribbons, cast-off artificial flowers, and other articles of
_vertu_, wherein her soul delighted.

When Miss Ophelia entered the kitchen, Dinah did not rise, but smoked on
in sublime tranquillity, regarding her movements obliquely out of the
corner of her eye, but apparently intent only on the operations around
her.

Miss Ophelia commenced opening a set of drawers.

"What is this drawer for, Dinah?" she said.

"It's handy for 'most anything, missis," said Dinah. So it appeared to
be. From the variety it contained Miss Ophelia pulled out first a fine
damask table-cloth stained with blood, having evidently been used to
envelop some raw meat.

"What's this, Dinah? You don't wrap up meat in your mistress's best
table-cloth?"

"Oh, Lor', missis, no; the towels was all a-missin', so I just did it. I
laid it out to wash that ar; that's why I put it thar."

"Shir'less!" said Miss Ophelia to herself, proceeding to tumble over the
drawer, where she found a nutmeg-grater and two or three nutmegs, a
Methodist hymn-book, a couple of soiled Madras handkerchiefs, some yarn
and knitting-work, a paper of tobacco and a pipe, a few crackers, one or
two gilded china saucers with some pomade in them, one or two thin old
shoes, a piece of