sented
the implication of not having as many trials in life as her neighbors.
"As to getting the work done up in the forenoon, that's a thing I never
can teach 'em; they'd rather not. Chloe likes to keep her work 'round,
and do it by snacks, any time, day or night, when the notion takes
her."

"And it was just for that reason I never would have one of those
creatures 'round," said Mrs. Katy. "Mr. Scudder was principled against
buying negroes,--but if he had _not_ been, I should not have wanted any
of _their_ work. I know what's to be done, and most help is no help to
me. I want people to stand out of my way and let me get done. I've
tried keeping a girl once or twice, and I never worked so hard in my
life. When Mary and I do all ourselves, we can calculate everything to
a minute; and we get our time to sew and read and spin and visit, and
live just as we want to."

Here, again, Mrs. Brown looked uneasy. To what use was it that she was
rich and owned servants, when this Mordecai in her gate utterly
despised her prosperity? In her secret heart she thought Mrs. Katy must
be envious, and rather comforted herself on this view of the
subject,--sweetly unconscious of any inconsistency in the feeling with
her views of utter self-abnegation just announced.

Meanwhile the tea-table had been silently gathering on its snowy
plateau the delicate china, the golden butter, the loaf of faultless
cake, a plate of crullers or wonders, as a sort of sweet fried cake was
commonly called,--tea-rusks, light as a puff, and shining on top with a
varnish of egg,--jellies of apple and quince quivering in amber
clearness,--whitest and purest honey in the comb,--in short, everything
that could go to the getting-up of a most faultless tea.

"I don't see," said Mrs. Jones, resuming the gentle paeans of the
occasion, "how Miss Scudder's loaf-cake always comes out jest so. It
don't rise neither to one side nor t'other, but jest even all 'round;
and it a'n't white one side and burnt the other, but jest a good brown
all over; and it don't have no heavy streak in it."

"Jest what Cerinthy Ann was sayin', the other day," said Mrs. Twitchel.
"She says she can't never be sure how hers is a-comin' out. Do what she
can, it will be either too much or too little; but Miss Scudder's is
always jest so. 'Law,' says I, 'Cerinthy Ann, it's _faculty_,--that's
it;--them that has it has it, and them that hasn't--why, they've got to
work hard, and not do half so we