to Boston, while Aunt Barbara gave all
needful directions to Betty with regard to the management of the house,
and the garden, and plants, and cellar door, which must be shut nights,
and the spot on the roof which sometimes leaked when it rained, and the
burdocks and dandelions which must be dug up, and the grass which Uncle
Billy Thompson must cut once in two weeks, and the old cat, Tabby, and
the young cat, Jim, who had come to the door in a storm, and was now the
pet of the house, and the canary bird, and the yeast, and look in the
vinegar barrel to see that all was right, and be sure and scald the
milk-pans, and turn them up in the sun for an hour, and keep the doors
locked, and the silver up in the scuttle-hole; and if she heard the rat
which baffled and tormented them so long, get some poison and kill it,
but not on any account let it get in the cistern; and keep the
door-steps clean, and the stoop, and once in a while sweep the low roof
at the back of the house, and not sit up late nights, or sleep very long
in the morning; and inasmuch as there would be so little to do, she
might as well finish up all her new sewing, and make the pile of sheets
and pillow-cases which had been cut out since March. These were Aunt
Barbara's directions, which Betty, nothing appalled, promised to heed,
telling her mistress not to worry an atom, as things should be attended
to, even better than if she were at home to see to them herself.

Aunt Barbara knew she could trust old Betty, and so, after getting
herself vaccinated in both arms, as a precaution against the smallpox,
and procuring various disinfecting agents, and having underpockets put
in all her dresses, by way of eluding pickpockets, the good woman
started one hot July morning on her mission in search of Ethie. But,
alas, finding Ethie, or anyone, in New York, was like "hunting for a
needle in a hay mow," as Aunt Barbara began to think after she had been
for four weeks or more an inmate of an uptown boarding house,
recommended as first-class, but terrible to Aunt Barbara, from the
contrast it presented to her own clean, roomy home beneath the maple
trees, which came up to her so vividly, with all its delicious coolness
and fragrance, and blossoming shrubs, and newly cut grass, with the dew
sparkling like diamonds upon it.

Aunt Barbara was terribly homesick from the first, but she would not
give up; so day after day she traversed one street after another,
looking wistfully