'ow hi'm to
get hon vith 'er. Hif hi'm to take me horders from 'er, hi'd ruther go
back to the poor-'us."

"You are to take your orders from me and no one else. All I ask is
that you go on quietly with your work and pay no attention to her. You
know well enough that I can't have such goings on. I want you to let
Jane help you and learn her to do everything as far as she can. Mrs.
Mumpson can do the mending and ironing, I suppose. At any rate, I
won't have any more quarreling and uproar. I'm a quiet man and intend
to have a quiet house. You and Jane can get along very well in the
kitchen, and you say you understand the dairy work."

"Vell hi does, han noo hi've got me horders hi'll go right along."

Mrs. Mumpson was like one who had been rudely shaken out of a dream,
and she appeared to have sense enough to realize that she couldn't
assume so much at first as she anticipated. She received from Jane a
cup of coffee, and said feebly, "I can partake of no more after the
recent trying events."

For some hours she was a little dazed, but her mind was of too light
weight to be long cast down. Jane rehearsed Holcroft's words,
described his manner, and sought with much insistence to show her
mother that she must drop her nonsense at once. "I can see it in his
eye," said the girl, "that he won't stand much more. If yer don't come
down and keep yer hands busy and yer tongue still, we'll tramp. As to
his marrying you, bah! He'd jes' as soon marry Mrs. Wiggins."

This was awful prose, but Mrs. Mumpson was too bewildered and
discouraged for a time to dispute it, and the household fell into a
somewhat regular routine. The widow appeared at her meals with the air
of a meek and suffering martyr; Holcroft was exceedingly brief in his
replies to her questions, and paid no heed to her remarks. After
supper and his evening work, he went directly to his room. Every day,
however, he secretly chafed with ever-increasing discontent, over this
tormenting presence in his house. The mending and such work as she
attempted was so wretchedly performed that it would better have been
left undone. She was also recovering her garrulousness, and mistook
his toleration and her immunity in the parlor for proof of a growing
consideration. "He knows that my hands were never made for such coarse,
menial tasks as that Viggins does," she thought, as she darned one of
his stockings in a way that would render it almost impossible for him
to