ted with the circumstances it seemed
strange, why a person, apparently so strong and healthy, should be in
the Alms-House. Unfortunately, however, she was subject to fits,
which made her presence so unpleasant to the people with whom she
lived that at last, no one was willing to hire her. About that time,
too, she was taken very ill, and as she had no relatives, she was
removed to the poor-house, where she had remained ever since.

When Mrs. Parker became too feeble to work, Miss Grundy immediately
stepped into her place, filling it so well, that as Sal had said, Mr.
Parker bore a great deal from her, knowing that no one whom he could
hire would do as well, or save as much as she did. Sal Furbush she
could neither manage nor make work, and she vented her spite towards
her by getting her shut up on the slightest pretexts. Sal knew very
well to whom she was indebted for her "temporary seclusions," as she
called them, and she exerted herself to repay the debt with interest.
Sometimes on a sultry summer morning, when the perspiration stood
thickly on Miss Grundy's face as she bent over a red-hot cook-stove in
the kitchen, Sal with her, feet in the brook, which ran through the
back yard, and a big palm-leaf fan in her hand, would call out from
some shady spot, "Hallo, Miss Grundy, don't you wish you were a lady
boarder, and could be as cool and as comfortable as I am?"
Occasionally, too, when safely fastened in the pantry enjoying her
green tea and Boston crackers, she would be startled with the words,
"That must have an excellent relish!" and looking up, she would spy
Sal, cosily seated on the top shelf, eyeing her movements
complacently, and offering, perhaps, to assist her if she found the
tea too strong!

Miss Grundy wore a wig, and as she seemed disturbed whenever the fact
was mentioned, the walls of the house both inside and out were
frequently ornamented with ludicrous pictures of herself, in which she
was sometimes represented as entirely bald-headed, while with
spectacles on the end of her nose, she appeared to be peering hither
and thither in quest of her wig. On these occasions Miss Grundy's
wrath knew no bounds, and going to Mr. Parker she would lay the case
before him in so aggravated a form, that at last to get rid of her, he
would promise that, for the next offence, Sal should be shut up. In
this way the poor woman, to use her own words, "was secluded from the
visible world nearly half the time."

With the