pect Ethelyn to
"help" that day--but she might at least have offered to wipe the dinner
dishes, she thought. It would have shown her good will at all events.
But instead of that she had returned to her room the moment dinner was
over, and Eunice, who went to hunt for a missing sock of Richard's,
reported that she was lying on the lounge with a story book in her hand.

"Shiffless," was the word Mrs. Markham wanted to use, but she repressed
it, for she would not talk openly against Richard's wife so soon after
her arrival, though she did make some invidious remarks concerning the
handsome underclothes, wondering "what folks were thinking of to put so
much work where it was never seen. Puffs, and embroidery, and lace, and,
I vum, if the ruffles ain't tucked too," she continued, in a despairing
voice, hoping Ethelyn knew "how to iron such filagree herself, for the
mercy knew she didn't."

Now these same puffs, and embroidery, and ruffles, and tucks had excited
Eunice's liveliest admiration, and her fingers fairly itched to see how
they would look hanging on the clothes bars after passing through her
hands. That Ethelyn could touch them she never once dreamed. Her
instincts were truer than Mrs. Markham's and it struck her as perfectly
proper that one like Ethelyn should sit still while others served, and
to her mistress' remarks as to the ironing, she hastened to reply: "I'd
a heap sight rather do them up than to iron the boys' coarse shirts and
pantaloons. Don't you mind the summer I was at Camden working for Miss
Avery, who lived next door to Miss Judge Miller, from New York? She had
just such things as these, and I used to go in sometimes and watch Katy
iron 'em, so I b'lieve I can do it myself. Anyways, I want to try."

Fears that Eunice might rebel had been uppermost in Mrs. Markham's mind
when she saw the pile of elegant clothes, for she had a suspicion that
Mrs. Ethelyn would keep as much aloof from the ironing-board as she did
from the dish-washing; but if Eunice was willing and even glad of the
opportunity, why, that made a difference, and the good woman began to
feel so much better that by the time the last article was on the line,
the kitchen floor cleared up, and the basin of water heating on the
stove for her own ablutions, she was quite amiably disposed toward her
grand daughter-in-law, who had not made her appearance since dinner.
Ethelyn liked staying in her chamber better than anywhere else, and it
was esp