art was often sore to see Hilary's pretty hands smeared with
blacking of grates, and roughened with scouring of floors. To herself
this sort of thing had become natural--but Hilary!

All the time of Hilary's childhood, the youngest of the family had of
course, been spared all house-work; and afterward her studies had
left no time for it. For she was a clever girl, with a genuine love
of knowledge Latin, Greek, and even the higher branches of arithmetic
and mathematics, were not beyond her range; and this she found much
more interesting than washing dishes or sweeping floors. True, she
always did whatever domestic duty she was told to do; but her bent
was not in the household line. She had only lately learned to "see
dust," to make a pudding, to iron a shirt; and, moreover, to reflect,
as she woke up to the knowledge of how these things should be done,
and how necessary they were, what must have been her eldest sister's
lot during all these twenty years! What pains, what weariness, what
eternal toil must Johanna have silently endured in order to do all
those things which till now had seemed to do themselves!

Therefore, after much cogitation as to the best and most prudent way
to amend matters, and perceiving with her clear common sense that,
willing as she might be to work in the kitchen, her own time would be
much more valuably spent in teaching their growing school. It was
Hilary who these Christmas holidays, first started the bold idea, "We
must have a servant;" and therefore, it being necessary to begin with
a very small servant on very low wages, (