puzzled, and with all her strength is wishing
herself home again at Brooklyn, with John and Letty, and all the merry,
tormenting, kindly children.

"What shall I do for you now, Miss Molly?" asks Sarah, presently
breaking in upon these dismal broodings. This antiquated but devoted
maiden has stationed herself at the farthest end of the big room close
to Molly's solitary trunk (as though suspicious of lurking thieves),
and bears upon her countenance a depressed, not to say dejected,
expression. "Like mistress, like maid," she, too, is filled with the
gloomiest forebodings.

"Open my trunk and take out my clothes," says Molly, making no effort
at disrobing, beyond a melancholy attempt at pulling off her gloves,
finger by finger.

Sarah does as she is bidden.

"'Tis a tremenjous house, Miss Molly."

"Very. It is a castle, not a house."

"There's a deal of servants in it."

"Yes," absently.

"Leastways as far as I could judge with looking through the corners of
my eyes as I came along them big passages. From every door a'most there
popped a head bedizened with gaudy ribbons, and I suppose the bodies
was behind 'em."

"Let us hope so, Sarah." Rising, and laughing rather hysterically. "The
bare idea that those mysterious heads should lack a decent finish fills
me with the liveliest horror." Then, in a brighter tone, "Why, what is
the matter with you, Sarah? You look as if you had fallen into the very
lowest depths of despair."

"Not so much that as lonesome, miss; they all seem so rich and grand
that I feel myself out of place."

Molly smiles a little. After all, in spite of the difference in their
positions, it is clear to her that she and her maid share pretty much
the same fears.

"There was a very proud look about the set of their caps," says Sarah,
waxing more and more dismal. "Suppose they were to be uncivil to me,
Miss Molly, on account of my being country-reared and my gowns not
being, as it were, in the height of the fashion, what should I do? It
is all this, miss, that is weighing me down."

"Suppose, on the contrary," says her mistress, with a little defiant
ring in her tone, stepping to the glass and surveying her beautiful
face with eager scrutiny, "you were to make a sensation, and cut out
all these supercilious dames in your hall, how would it be then? Come,
Sarah, let me teach you your new duties. First take my hat, now my
jacket, now----"

"Shall I do your hair, Miss Molly?"

"No," with