as
right. He believed the name of their latest cook was Katherine. They
called her "Katy." He knew that his wife was sorry to part with her,
and inferred that she was a worthy woman.

We, too, were leaving town, but only for the summer. Katy "liked the
country in hot weather. All the best fam'lies now-a-days had their
country-places."

It is not an easy matter to "change help" during a summer sojourn in a
cottage distant an hour and a half from town. The act involves one or
more railway journeys, much running about in hot streets, and much
hopeless ringing at dumb and dusty doors. This is the explanation of
Katy's six months' stay in my kitchen. In town, she would have been
dismissed at the end of the first week. She was a wretched cook, and a
worse laundress. Within an hour after she entered my door, the decent
black gown was exchanged for a dingy calico which she wore, without a
collar, and minus a majority of the buttons, all day long and every
day. She was "a settled girl"--owning to twenty-eight summers, and
having weathered forty winters. Her hair, streaked with gray, tumbled
down as persistently as Patience Riderhood's, and was uncomfortably
easy of identification in _ragout_ and muffins. Her slippers were down
at heel; her kitchen was never in order; her tins were black; her pots
were greasy; her range was dull; her floors unclean. Like all her
compeers, she "found the place harder nor she had been give to
onderstand, but was willin' to do her best, seein' she had come."

Her best was sometimes sour bread, sometimes burned biscuits,
generally weak, muddy coffee, always under-seasoned vegetables and
over-seasoned soup. By July 1, she developed a genius for quarreling
with the other servants that got up a domestic hurricane, and I told
her she must leave. She promptly burst into tears, and reminded me
that I "had engaged her for the sayson, an' what would a pore girl be
doin' in the empty city in the middle of the summer?

"An' whativer they may say o' me ways down-stairs, it's the timper of
a babby I have, an' would niver throw a harrd wurrd at a dog, let
alone a human. Whin they think me cross, it's only that I'm a bit
quoiet, an' who can wonder? thinkin' o' me pore brother as was
drownded las' summer, an' him niver out o' me moind!"

I weakly allowed her to stay upon promise of good and peaceable
behavior, and tried to make the best of her, as she had of the place.

One September day, just when the physi