ll be opened, and it didn't matter what you paid
her or how comfortable you made her, off she would go, and you might
think yourself lucky if she gave a week's warning. Hard times shut down
the mills and brought her back again; but periods of prosperity were
very apt to find the ladies of Elgin where I am compelled to introduce
Mrs Murchison--in the kitchen. "You'd better get up--the girl's gone,"
Lorne had stuck his head into his sister's room to announce, while
yet the bells were ringing and the rifles of the local volunteers were
spitting out the feu de joie. "I've lit the fire an' swep' out the
dining-room. You tell mother. Queen's Birthday, too--I guess Lobelia's
about as mean as they're made!" And the Murchisons had descended to face
the situation. Lorne had by then done his part, and gone out into the
chromatic possibilities of the day; but the sense of injury he had
communicated to Advena in her bed remained and expanded. Lobelia, it was
felt, had scurvily manipulated the situation--her situation, it might
have been put, if any Murchison had been in the temper for jesting.
She had taken unjustifiable means to do a more unjustifiable thing,
to secure for herself an improper and unlawful share of the day's
excitements, transferring her work, by the force of circumstances, to
the shoulders of other people since, as Mrs Murchison remarked, somebody
had to do it. Nor had she her mistress testified the excuse of fearing
unreasonable confinement. "I told her she might go when she had done her
dishes after dinner," said Mrs Murchison, "and then she had only to come
back at six and get tea--what's getting tea? I advised her to finish her
ironing yesterday, so as to be free of it today; and she said she would
be very glad to. Now, I wonder if she DID finish it!" and Mrs Murchison
put down her pan of potatoes with a thump to look in the family clothes
basket. "Not she! Five shirts and ALL the coloured things. I call it
downright deceit!"

"I believe I know the reason she'll SAY," said Advena. "She objects to
rag carpet in her bedroom. She told me so."

"Rag carpet--upon my word!" Mrs Murchison dropped her knife to exclaim.
"It's what her betters have to do with! I've known the day when that
very piece of rag carpet--sixty balls there were in it and every one I
sewed with my own fingers--was the best I had for my spare room, with
a bit of ingrain in the middle. Dear me!" she went on with a smile that
lightened the whole si