here, as elsewhere, the girl kept her filial care of
the old woman. The question of her relation to Mrs. Lander became so
pressing among several of the guests that, after Clementina had watched
over the banisters, with throbbing heart and feet, a little dance one
night which the other girls had got up among themselves, and had fled
back to her room at the approach of one of the kindlier and bolder of
them, the landlord felt forced to learn from Mrs. Lander how Miss Claxon
was to be regarded. He managed delicately, by saying he would give the
Sunday paper she had ordered to her nurse, "Or, I beg your pardon,"
he added, as if he had made a mistake. "Why, she a'n't my nuhse," Mrs.
Lander explained, simply, neither annoyed nor amused; "she's just a
young lady that's visiting me, as you may say," and this put an end
to the misgiving among the ladies. But it suggested something to Mrs.
Lander, and a few days afterwards, when they came out from Boston where
they had been shopping, and she had been lavishing a bewildering waste
of gloves, hats, shoes, capes and gowns upon Clementina, she said, "I'll
tell you what. We've got to have a maid."

"A maid?" cried the girl.

"It isn't me, or my things I want her for," said Mrs. Lander. "It's you
and these dresses of youas. I presume you could look afta them, come to
give youa mind to it; but I don't want to have you tied up to a lot of
clothes; and I presume we should find her a comfo't in moa ways than
one, both of us. I don't know what we shall want her to do, exactly; but
I guess she will, if she undastands her business, and I want you should
go in with me, to-morror, and find one. I'll speak to some of the
ladies, and find out whe's the best place to go, and we'll get the best
there is."

A lady whom Mrs. Lander spoke to entered into the affair with zeal born
of a lurking sense of the wrong she had helped do Clementina in the
common doubt whether she was not herself Mrs. Lander's maid. She offered
to go into Boston with them to an intelligence office, where you could
get nice girls of all kinds; but she ended by giving Mrs. Lander the
address, and instructions as to what she was to require in a maid.
She was chiefly to get an English maid, if at all possible, for the
qualifications would more or less naturally follow from her nationality.
There proved to be no English maid, but there was a Swedish one who had
received a rigid training in an English family living on the Continent