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Updated: May 3, 2025
The astonished maid-of-all-work, who had swallowed a spoon of soup with great discomfort, sprang up, all in a tremble, stammering with defiant virtue: "M'sieur le Comte does not forget that I am an honest woman!" "No, my dear Francine; I am certain of it. So sit down in peace. I will tell you the situation."
The widow was left in affluence, but reverses of various kinds had befallen her: a bank broke; an investment failed; she went into a small business and became insolvent; then she entered into service, sinking lower and lower, from housekeeper down to maid-of-all-work, never long retaining a place, though nothing decided against her character was ever alleged.
A thin matron, in rusty black silk, very taciturn, with large, steady, alarmed eyes, that seemed to look in your face, to read what you might have seen in the dark rooms and passages through which you had passed, was in charge of it, with a solitary "maid-of-all-work" under her command. My poor friend had taken lodgings in this house, on account of their extraordinary cheapness.
Now Liz said nothing to any of them, and went grimly on with her work. "It's my turn to help you get dinner, Lizzie," Laura said, quietly. "What are we going to have? Shall I begin by peeling the potatoes?" "No. Don't want yer," said Liz, shortly. "Why! of course you want some help " "Don't neither!" snapped the maid-of-all-work.
She had never known a playmate. The children of the college circle went to school in town, while she, from her sixth year, was taught systematically by her grandfather. The faithful oversight of Mary, the maid-of-all-work, constituted Sylvia's sole acquaintance with anything approximating maternal care.
If you want a woman to help you, even a maid-of-all-work, tell her your whole story, and make no half-confidences: the drudge brightened up through her tears, and assumed a look of intelligence at once. "Lor!" said she, "why didn't ye say so? In course I see the young lady, as I was a-fetchin' in the dinner beer.
So, for a moment, they confronted each other about equally aghast, flushed up to the hair, and simultaneously and incoherently, begging each other's pardon neither could have said for what, the goddess out of the machine being Inga, the maid-of-all-work.
But she was one thing. She was exquisitely sly. Her slyness was definite and pervasive. In her it took the place of wit. It took the place of culture. It even took the place of vivacity. It was a sort of maid-of-all-work in her personality and never seemed to tire. The odd thing was that it did not seem to tire others. They found it permanently piquant.
As for the bride, so dazing were the circumstances incident to the double change of matrimony and adaptation to city life, that her judgment was in suspension. Yet though she smiled and sewed demurely, she was thinking. The yellow clapboarded house and metal stag, and a maid-of-all-work at her beck and call, were gratifying at the outset and made demands upon her energies.
Ponsonby declared herself so much invigorated by Ormersfield air, that she would go to see her old friend the gardener. Mary hurried to fetch her bonnet, and returned while a panegyric was going on upon her abilities as maid-of-all-work, in her mother's difficulties with male housemaids black and brown and washerwomen who rode on horseback in white satin shoes.
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